Elements
by Randman
Summary: Words just can't describe a story. A dream. A crash. A button. A scream. A bowl. A leap. A blast. A maniac. A tear. A fight. The elements are suffered before a revolution comes. Now with Omake.
1. Prologue

_Disclaimer:  
Neon Genesis Evangelion belongs mainly to GAINAX and not to me. This fic, however, incorperates the characters and settings from the TV series. Most of the story, here, is mine. Also, I do not own Dolby, as they, themselves, do. I don't own anything mentioned in this fic if you believe that another person does. Don't sue me!_

And, so, here's the prologue. Nice and short. The first chapter is soon to go up.  
Much effort has been put in this to make for an interesting tale. Start with what we have - this magnificant cast of characters - put them in the most unexpecting situation, and you shall see... a new beginning. Secrets will unfold before your eyes, things never done before will be done by the most unexpected, things will never look the same again. It all begins now. So, begin. I'm done.

* * *

**  
Elements**

_Original Idea/Plot by Nathan Rawlins  
Adapted/Written by William Wong_

**Prologue**

Asuka shoved the door to the side and stormed in. Paused. Turned around and went back out again, red in the face.  
A moment later, Misato opened the door, again, and called, "Shinji, get up, we got to get to NERV pretty soon."  
Shinji turned in his sheets and groaned, "Mmm... But I was having a really good dream..." He became aware of the light that streamed through the window. He succeeded in opening his eyes by squinting at the light, but gave in and turned away from the window, facing Misato's feet.  
"Yeah," said Misato, "I can tell."  
Shinji blinked again and looked down at what Misato was referring to. With a squeal, he jumped, hid his crotch and ran out of the room, half-naked. He ran past Asuka, sitting at the table, and straight to the bathroom. Asuka's first and only thought about this came. _Baka..._  
In the shower, Shinji twisted the cold-water knob on full blast.  
Nothing came out.  
On cue, Misato called out from the other side of the door, "Oh, yeah. It's a little cold, today... so the water system's frozen..."

It turned out that opening the window a bit served just as well as a cold shower for Shinji; however, he struggled to get out from under the pile of snow.

Meanwhile, at a particularly dark apartment, a siren was set off.  
Lights flashed blue, red and green. These colours, however, seemed to cancel each other out, combining to give a simple, bright white. They woke the room's occupants, either way.  
Maya, the frist to respond, snapped into a sitting position with a start. She looked at the electronic message board on the wall, opposite, which scrolled some messages in red LEDs. She couldn't quite read the message, but she got it, anyway. "Oh, no! Not another angel!"  
She jumped out of futon and dashed to get her contacts. "Guys! Get up!" She yelled. "Come on! It's another one!" She then rushed to the bathroom and began to change.  
Shigeru moaned and twisted. "Oh, I don't want to get up... Just give me a few minutes." Makoto, however, got up and stretched slowly.  
"Get up or Maya's going to splash water on our heads again, Shigeru," he said, making his futon in a sleepy fasion. It has happened numerous times, actually, to both him and Shigeru when either one couldn't get out quickly enough before Maya was changed into her typical NERV uniform. Such were the lives of these flatmates.  
Shigeru squeezed his eyes. "Mmm... But I was having a really good dream..."  
"Yeah, I can tell," said Maya, looking down at him, sternly.  
Shigeru looked up at Maya. He got a bucketful of extremely cold water.  
"But all of humanity depends on us getting up and getting dressed," she continued. "Lets go!"  
"Whatever," moaned Makoto. He wondered if Maya even read what the message board said, and checked for himself. Nope, it was definitely an angel.

All the while, Gendou was meditating. His legs were crossed in an inverted way and his hands were put together between his thighs. It had a tub of Nestlé Yogurt on it. The room was candle-lit. Gendou meditated quietly.  
"Yummm..."  
His resonating chant was interrupted, and Gendou's answering machine beeped. Ritsuko Akagi's voice entered. "Hey, commander. Uh, sorry, I know you're meditating, right now, but we have a potential angel indicated by the MAGI. We'll need you real soon... Oh, and I hear there's a blizzard going on up there. You can't take the train. See you real soon." The machine beeped again.  
Gendou eyes slowly opened, revealing two glaringly shiney irises; light reflected off them from a small slit in the windows that landed on him. They gleamed in the darkness of the room, brighter than the little yellow flames. Gendou's eyelids became two, ominousslits of light. For some reason, his eyes were naturally like that. Gendou put on his prescription sunglasses and stood up.  
He acknowledged the snow. No train, today. "Time for plan B..."

Misato's car slid down the road at high speed.  
Bang! She hit a parked car.  
Bang! She hit a phone booth.  
Bang! She hit a pedestrian.  
Bang! She hit a bike.  
Bang! She hit a rabbit.  
_Wait a minute_ thought Misato, _aren't rabbits extinct?_  
Bang! She hit a light pole.  
"Dammit!" she shouted. The blizzard has been quite heavy and no one would be able to see more than five meters in it. Yet, perhaps Misato's blood-alcohol level might have contributed. Certainly, she wouldn't have seen Rei walking in the blizzard if she hadn't hit the light pole.  
"Rei?" said Misato after she emerged from her car. "What are you doing? It's negative sixty degrees out here! You don't think some loose bandages are gonna keep you warm!? ...You wanna ride?"  
Ironically, Rei was known as the Icy Queen to the few who knew her, but she nodded and entered the car. She threw her bag across the back, which hit Shinji square in the crotch. He gasped and his voice went entirely high-pitched. "Gah! Eek! Oooh..." Shinji forced a clenched smile at Rei as she sat next to him.  
"Err," his new voice said. "Hi, Rei."

Misato drove on.  
She hit hit a couple of other things on the way, but as she approached what she estimated as the intersection, she realized there was a major traffic jam ahead. "Oh, shit!"  
She skidded, slid, and hit the first car she saw. Bang! Everyone in the car was thrown to the right. Perhaps rolling once, and sliding, and bumping around other cars, Misato's poor car bounced around like a pinball in slow motion, making all sorts of interesting noises as it hit certain things. When the noise had died down, only traffic noise was heard.  
Shinji couldn't help but notice his head was buried right into Rei's chest.  
He had contemplated whether he should jump out and apologize right away or pretend he was unconscious or dead. He wasn't quick at making decisions.  
"Get a room, Baka," grunted Asuka. She turned away in disgust, with steam coming out of her fiery hair, aiding in melting some of the snow that surrounded within a four meter radius.

"Watch out, Shigeru!"  
Bang! They all smashed into Misato's car.

Bang! Kaji smashed into Shigeru's car.

Bang! Kouzou smashed into Kaji's car. (It was a rental - Fuyutsuki's car.)

_Jingle, jingle!_ A large sleigh stopped by the sidewalk next the the ruins at the intersection.  
When everyone had finally emerged, unharmed, from the pile-up, they stared stupidly at the Sleigh. A thin, tall figure in a red suit emerged through the thick snow that poured from the sky. All could percieve he was solemn and serious. Too much so to be the you-know-who. All could percieve a second after that that he was Gendou.  
From that moment of silence came a drunk laugh. "Hey, Grumpy Santa," mocked Misato, at last. "Where's your Christmas Spirit?"  
Everyone started laughing, heartily.  
Gendou looked at Misato, undaunted. "Hoe."  
Everyone eventually became silent again. Gendou raised his arms.  
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," he called. "Now, come with me! To war and victory!" He pointed in the direction of NERV's frontdoor. "Come! Away!"  
He marched back into his giant sleigh and everyone got on.

"Glad you could make it," greeted Ritsuko. She had just started booting up MAGI when everyone came in with red coats and furry hats on. "I see the Commander has supplied you with our temporary winter uniforms. Just to let you know, I've been working on the MAGI while you were on your 'extended weekend,' so you would be happy to know I have upgraded the MAGI's hardware and platform."  
"What a crappy waste of money," muttered Gendou. He was financially tight.  
"I heard that!"  
Gendou jumped back and pointed at her like he had just discovered it was she who pulled the plug on the Rei's. "How the hell could you hear that!?"  
Ritsuko smiled. "Need I mention that the MAGI system has incorperated the new Dolby Digital Surround Sound® 17.4 Speaker/Microphone System?" She said, tapping on her earplug. As if on cue, like things have always been, the giant MAGI screen displayed the startup Dolby Digital® sign and made a mesmerizing tune (which was also trademarked).  
Everyone goggled, "Oooo...!"

After some organization, Gendou stood up behind his frontdesk, and began a rather Hitler-like speech, all enhanced further by the new Surround Sound feature. His voice boomed all around the Geofront.  
"**Lieutenants!** _Sub_-lieutenants! **Men** of NERV!  
"_Fifteen_ years of world-historical events is coming to an end. The day of great decision is nigh. In this grave period, I speak to you, Children of the Evangelions, as representatives of _all_ Humanity. _In_ addition, I speak to **all** of you to _fight_ and defeat the Angels for Man's and our **own** futures!"  
Already, the Japanese Flag skillfully dropped behind Gendou, flapping in the pseudo-wind, proudly. A rather patriotic one, Gendou had done. He had roused the crowd.  
**"Ride now! Ride Now!  
"Ride! Ride for Ruin!  
"AND THE WORLD'S ENDING!!!"**

The people of NERV cheered in a deafening roar. They were berserkers. The janitor waved his broomstick like a primative spear. War was what they were out for. Gendou finally knew that Dolby Digital® was a good idea. He smiled above them all. The crowd never died down. They have been hyped to an insane level. Nothing can stop them.  
"Sorry to interrupt," interrupted Ritsuko, looking up from her computer, "But it seems like we'll be snowbound for the next three weeks."

Silently, everyone sweatdropped in unison and immediately fell on their backs.

* * *

As the end credits scroll, the music plays "Neodämmerung".  
What will happen to our characters? Can they survive the three weeks? What horrors await them, if any? Has Santa Clause reincarnated? Or has Hitler? Will the story get better? Will something happen between Shinji and... Rei? (hint hint) 

I hope you enjoyed it. Credit goes out to RePliKaNT for proofing.  
Look out for the first chapter, soon. And drop by a review, even if it's just to let me know you've read it. The next chater will be bigger and bolder than ever. The second will be lightly shorter, but the third will be... Well, you'll see. (To let you know, there will be some old Lord of the Rings and... The Matrix references.)  
The elements begin.


	2. Water

Thank you for bearing with me in the Prologue, and I apologise for having any of you wait long. I have been unable to contact by proofer until just ten minutes ago. At last, we shall get the first week rolling. Rolling like the way our young Children shall be. Rolling in the rain... Am I giving too much away?  
The Q&A session will be found at the end of this chapter. Want a rant? Go check it out when you get there! That means I'll let you right on to the actual fic, now. This is the first week...

* * *

**  
Week One - Water**

Later that day, Gendou had finally come to a second announcement. He checked that his microphone was on by tapping it. Windows shattered. It worked.  
He stood up and looked down at everyone. "Well, it seems that I and Ritsuko have finally decided what to do in the meantime. We can not be freed from this Geofront, so all we can do is stay here for the three weeks. The angel arrives at the end of those three weeks. The point is...  
"We have made a list of household choirs for everyone to do. This excludes me, of course..." He held a scrolled list and let it unroll. It rolled down to the bottom of the giant room, across the floor, between some terminals and stuffed itself in to an unused room. Gendou was, at first, intending to read all that out until he had a better idea after actually having a better look at it.  
"It will be sent to you by email shortly. The roster shall take effect tomorrow. That is all."  
Gendou pressed a button on the top of the letter and the scroll wound itself back up neatly.

Shinji took a look at the list and found he had something to do that day. "Ah, man! Why don't they get the janitor to that stuff?"  
He did it anyway and mopped his way down NERV. He kept his cap facing down over his face to avoid any recognition from anyone he passed. _Today,_ though Shinji, _is gonna be the most depressing day of my life. This has got to be my father's fault!_ But still, he was called to do this, and do this he must.

In the girls bathroom, Shinji continued to mop silently at the floor.  
_Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Up. Down. Up. Down... huh? What's this? Why can't I rub it off?_  
Bending down, Shinji scrubbed a little harder at the black patch. It didn't move. Shinji looked at it, frustrated. This has presented itself as Shinji's first biggest obstacle. He put the mop back in the bucket and took out a brush and got down on his knees. He tried to scratch it off. It didn't work. Shinji took out his toothbrush and tried to scrub it off. Lightly, at first, but it soon engrossed him into scratching that bastard off. Within a minute, Shinji was doing it like he saw his father's face in it.  
Meanwhile, Rei pushed the flush button. It didn't work. Two more futile attempts more, then she stopped. She saw why it didn't work, and resigned herself to opening the door.  
She found that Shinji was on the floor beneath her feet.  
Shinji noticed it and thought why there would be two feet in front of him. _Because there is a person, there, of course. Who is this person?_ He looked up.  
He was immediately taken aback.  
He was staring up at Rei and up Rei's dress. He was even more surprised that she was wearing red hot panties. Red panties? Rei?!  
Shinji jumped with a scream and realized he was simply getting further up Rei's dress. He fell back immediately, kicked his feet back and literally swept Rei off her feet though in the most ungraceful way.  
She fell and ended up on top of Shinji.

Rei contemplated, for a moment, on what she should be doing next. Certainly, she had a feeling this sort of thing had happened before and she tried to think what happened after. Getting on top of someone. Staring at each others eyes.  
"Err--" said Shinji in an extremely high-pitched voice, "I sortta don't mind if you go on like this..."  
Rei realized she had her knee in Shinji's groin, and decided to stand up.  
"Excuse me," she said and walked out the door.  
Despite the pain, Shinji stared at her in wonder as she went out. Two stabs in the groin. Red panties... It meant something.  
"I'll never close my eyes again..."  
And he blinked.

"Shit!"

The next day, Misato went out to get a can of beer.  
"Good morning, Katsuragi!"  
"Hm," mumbled Misato as she stumbled down the corridor.  
Her hair had the 'morning' look. She was still in pajamas. She needed beer.  
"Major!" called Ritsuko's voice.  
Misato turned around, eyes half-closed. "Hm?"  
"Hi, just to remind you, you've got cooking duty tonight, so try not to overdo it, or at least get Shinji to help you. I don't know what the Commander was thinking when he put you on that list; of course, I tried to stop him but he was this cold lump of thing that I just can't get at. (You know how he is.) Anyway, if you want to get this cooking thing through as painlessly for us as possible, we've got a few boxes of Instant Ramen in the storage somewhere. You're an expert at this, right? Just look it up - ah, I've got the code for it here - and make sure you don't put too much curry in, okay? Last time I've... well, you know..." Ritsuko looked at Misato, carefully, and decided to end there. "Alright, I'll see you later."  
"Hm," said Misato and she stumbled off to the fridge. _Me on cooking duty?_ She thought. _How thoughtful._  
Misato opened the fridge and peered in. There was no beer. _Oh, damn,_ she thought and fell unconscious.  
The absence of her blood-alcohol level, that day, must also have contributed to what happened that evening.

That evening, Misato began the immense and downright grueling task of cooking dinner.  
As she walked to the kitchen, she met Makoto on the way, who stopped her. "Hi, Misato! I hear you're cooking dinner, tonight. Can't wait to see what you'll cook up!" he said, cluelessly. "Last night, with Shigeru cooking, I never thought toasted marshmallow could get that sticky. Horrible. You are the Major, after all. I'm sure you'll be cooking up a storm!"  
Misato smiled happily at Makoto. "I sure will!" It was true.  
"So, Misato," asked Makoto, "what _are_ you cooking?"  
Misato continued her smile saying that it was the Misato's Secret Super Special Broth. She said she was also still working on it.  
"Alright," said Makoto thoughtfully, "Can't wait!"  
Misato smiled and went off to the kitchen.  
In the kitchen, she rummaged through the cupboards to find what ingredients she should add to the broth. She managed to find five things: Sugar, eggs, salt, red wine and Ritsuko's Secret Prototype PVA Ultraglue. Misato looked at the bottle and shrugged, "What the heck!"  
She put all the ingredients in and mixed it together in a giant, black pot. Mixing together the evilly black, thick soup. With the power in her arms, she brought the wooden spoon round repetitively. The only light in the room shone like the full moon upon this doing. A stifling aroma was created. A piercing noise was screeched. She laughed evilly.  
_Wait, did I just laugh like that?_ She thought, surprised at it. _It felt great! Muahahahahahaha!!!_ And she continued to mix into the night...  
She dipped her finger into the inky broth and pulled it out, the broth stretched as she pulled it out and eventually snapped with a deep, nauseating gloop. The liquid enveloped her finger, waiting to be tasted. Misato opened her mouth and stuck her entire finger in her mouth. She allowed a few seconds for the taste to come through, and she followed on to swallow...  
_Mm, not bad!_

Throughout the halls of NERV, the dark silence was interrupted, momentarily, by the tinkling of a Triangle, amplified by the Dolby Digital Surround Sound®. As it rung, Misato's voice rang over it, "Come get it!"  
As the first customer came in, the first thing he noticed was the cute little apron Misato wore with the slogan, "I 'HEART' T3!" Secondly, he noticed the big black pot that's bubbling a strange, new smell.  
"What is this?" Said Gendou, just like that.  
"It's my latest and greatest achievement in cooking history! I call it _The Broth_!"  
Gendou looked at it. "What's in it?"  
Misato happily replied, "A mixture of several of the best ingredients we've got! Which are eggs, milk, sugar, the good ol' red wine, PV--"  
"Fine, give me a bowl."  
"Here you are!" said Misato, handing a bowl. "Tell all your friends about me!"  
Gendou got a spoon, and held the bowl of _The Broth_ in his other hand. He delivered one last remark, pushing his glasses up with his spoon. "_That_ will be for me to decide." And he walked.  
He did not reply to Misato's "So that means you'll tell your friends, right?"  
In the queue, Shinji looked up from his book, muttering, "What friends?"  
Gendou stopped and turned his eyes on him, "I heard that!"  
"D'oh!"

As Shinji walked up not very long later, he tripped on something and his book landed right in the pot. "Dammit!"  
Misato was looking the other way and he quickly retrieved his book. He hoped he could clean it because it was from the library. As he tried to open his book, he noticed some very disturbing things:  
Firstly, his book was firmly stuck together, making it impossible to open. Secondly, he saw that he tripped over a tub of Ritsuko's PVA Ultraglue. Thirdly, he noticed that Misato was actually _cooking_!  
"Oh, my God!" yelled Shinji like the world would end. And he dashed out of the room and to his father. "There's still a little time!"  
Faster than he had ever sprinted before, Shinji did things he never thought he could do. Going through the many corridors it took to get to Gendou's front desk, where he would be eating.

Shinji dodged some NERV personnel, leaped over a "Caution: Slippery" sign, flipped over Asuka (mopping the floor), and slid between Kouzou's legs.  
_Thank goodness I had that floor all waxed up,_ Kouzou thought.  
Shinji had now reached up to Gendou's platform, and everything went slow-mo. He saw Gendou holding his spoon going up to his mouth as he ran. Shinji made a leap, a roll, a jump, and kicked Gendou's bowl away like a football.  
"Splutter! What the-? Shinji you bastard! You've just stuffed up my dinner!"  
"But it was PVA'd! Look!"  
Gendou turned dramatically to where Shinji was pointing.  
The bowl had sailed up and hit the ceiling. The contents were actually stuck onto the ceiling of the Command Center. However, the bowl didn't, and it fell, slowly,with a gloop...  
As Maya walked, a bowl hit her on the head, causing herto fall back and hit a red button. The fire alarm went off and the sprinklers were spraying full-blast. Everything was drenched in the cold water.  
Asuka, who mopped the floor, spilt the detergent and she immediately slipped onto the floor and slid down the rather sloped corridor, down to Gendou's desk. She hit Shinji with force, who then rolled ever Gendou's desk and off it, plummeting down a rather high height.

Instead of splattering, Shinji hit a large cargo-trolley full of empty boxes, causing only a few bruises. The trolley started to roll off.  
To Shinji's alarm, he reached an extremely high speed and is about to hit a wall. Shinji screamed and tried to lean onto one side. He succeeded very well in avoiding the wall and he was left to control this trolley as he sailed down into the narrower corridors of NERV where he had never dared venture.  
Left. Left. Right. LEFT! Right. Right. Bang! Right. Left. Miss. Left. Bang!  
Shinji had no idea where he was going as he sailed down deeper into Terminal Dogma, knocking over some overly drenched employees. What seemed like a long time later, he eventually entered an extremely large room.  
What caught his eye was a giant, half-grown, glowing Lilith stuck on a cross. Shinji stared at it in wonder and amazement. An unsure, open half-smile was slapped on his face. (You know that anime expression.)  
Shinji continued to stare at it as he sailed across the flooded room and into an elevator. The doors closed and the elevator went up.

With the sprinklers still on, the elevator next to Gendou's desk opened and out sailed Shinji. Shinji's eyes widened and braced for the impact.  
Gendou was knocked over and his glassed went flying off him.  
"Argh! My glasses!" Gendou blindly patted the wet ground for his glasses. He could see not a thing. He succeedded in ripping Ritsuko's dress off as she came in, and Ritsuko screamed as she fell over. Her shoes went flying across the room and knocked the MAGI's holographic-projection projector out of its position.  
Thanks to Kouzou, Gendou put his glasses back on, stood up and swung around to face the music. The projector swung straight into Gendou's eyes, and Gendou screamed again. "**Argh!!! My eyes!**"  
He swung around and staggered in pain, clutching his face and covering his eyes. As he did, he knocked the trolley away, with Shinji still in it.  
"Oh, no!..." began Shinji as he started to roll down the slope, slowly at first, but inevitably growing faster.  
"No! NO!!!"

He went down at ultra-high speed. As he looked ahead of him, through the heavy sprinkled rain, he saw two figures. Shinji knew he couldn't dodge these ones. "GANG WAY!"  
Rei tried to help Asuka up for the _n_th time. Asuka cursed at Rei and tried to get up for herself for the _n_1th time. Before she could fail again, Shinji went right into them.  
Rei's strap of her dress got caught on the handle and she gracefully swung and landed on the back of the speeding trolley. Asuka's long fingernails dug into Shinji's shoulder and Asuka landed on the trolley as well.  
Shinji gasped in pain as he tried to steer the trolley and get Asuka's fingernails off at the same time. "Asuka! Get your nails outta me!"  
The trolley proceeded into Terminal Dogma, again.  
Rei looked about her. _So this is what terror feels like..._  
It has been proven that at times of intense excitement such as fear, a scary movie, etc. the hormones that causes this also affects the brain, in which people of the opposite sex will seem more attractive. So something happened, then, that Rei did not intend...

They went past Lilith again, staring at her in awe. They went into the elevator again. Lilith rolled all seven of her eyes. _Boys..._

Gendou finally got a hold of his desk again, and he squeezed his eyes in pain, looking down to the ground. The elevator pinged.  
Kouzou braced himself this time. "Gendou, watch out," he said.  
Gendou turned around to him, "What?!"  
The elevator doors opened again and a bunch of screaming Children rolled out towards them.  
With all the super-human strength Kouzou had, he stopped the trolley like superman would stop a train. Amazingly, he succeeded. However, the Children flew off it. Shinji and Rei knocked Gendou to the ground, and bounced off, sliding away into the corridors. Asuka fell on top of Kouzou.

Gendou closed his eyes as he lay on the flooded ground, water pouring on his body. He felt the water around him and commented, "It's cold."

A muffled reply came from between Asuka's breasts, "Actually, it's quite warm, here."

* * *

As the end credits scroll, the music plays "Weird Science".  
What happened between Shinji and Rei? Why did she wear red panties? (I won't answer this, yet, actually.) More importantly, what will Ritsuko wear? Does the author have a fetish for burying heads in breasts? Will he actually tell? What is to become of... _The Broth_? (hint hint) 

Once again, I hope you have enjoyed it. Credit to RePliKantfor that rather tardy proofing.  
The second chapter comes pretty soon and I am sorry to tell that it will be the shortest of all. If you really wish - and I will be looking at the reviews - I will rewrite it to be longer, but I will require more time. If you like short stories (shorter than this one) then you'd like it, but those who like 'em long (and I'm sure many would like that) you won't be disappointed with the Third Week.  
So drop by a review, even if it's just to tell me you've read it. I will feel my work has not been in vain.

So, Q&A:  
**Q** - Seatbelts: _"An obvious Comedy that seems to have no actual place in a Timeline... maybe you can work on the background of this 'World' a bit more?"_  
**A**: A few undertones scattered here and there, but, being a mainly humour fic, it's very hard to do that. The fic is actually set as much in the 'real world' as possible, with some things never mentioned becoming the turning points of our story. In other words... there is a history in this, but the scope of this can only hint at it like Lord of the Rings on its own world. Not that I'm comparing the fic to Lord of the Rings. The most important aspects of the unmentioned things and events will be elaborate upon.  
**Q** - Seatbelts: _the "Techie Trio" living together is a novel idea that should be explored further." (Not quite a question, actually.)_  
**A**: Unfortunately, we won't see much of them anymore, but I'll keep that in mind.  
**Q** - Seatbelts: _"perhaps we'll be blessed with an EVA Battle on a Snowfield?"_  
**A**: (I'm thinking "House of Flying Daggers".) The battle takes place after the Third Week. By then, the snow would have melted. Which is unfortunate, but there has to be a way... (hint hint)  
**Q** - Seatbelts: _"An EVA Comedy without Kensuke is a criminal offence, you know..."_  
A: He and Toji must be outside, playing in the snow or something. Watch out for Week Three.  
**Q** - Anonymous: _"It was cute up until the sleigh, at which point it went from being mildly amusing to just dopey." (Not a question, for the fourth time.)_  
**A**: That's because of Gendou's character. I'll do many other things with him, as you may have had a taste of, already. When people go through experiences, they change. They never stay the same. From what they will experience throughout the weeks, things will be different in the end. I hope you continue to read through to the end, or you would have had only the less glamorous side of the fic (being a prologue and all).

Hehe, I rant too much.


	3. Fire

The most crucial chapter. Why? Because the Third Week follows right after! I hope I've been a good enough of an author to bring you a chapter that's as entertaining the previous ones.  
This is the deep breathe before the plunge. In other words, this is the last time you'll see your characters in the typical chaos that you are, thus far, accustomed to. In other words, next week is when it _really_ begins. That all just means that the sooner I get this over and done with, the sooner I can complete the last week.  
So, avoiding further ado, let's just get straight on with it.

* * *

**  
Week Two - Fire**

After some recovery time, that whole incident was happily out of everyone's minds. The rest of the week went on smoothly.

As for Shinji, he had had troubles. He kept having a recurring dream... a dream he can't easily shrug off... A really good dream. By Wednesday, Shinji knew something big was going on. He knew it had to do with Rei. He knew this obsession; and there's nothing he could do about it. However, he also knew there was one thing he could do in the midst of it.

Ritsuko walked up to Misato whilst she was playing video games on the computer. Ritsuko wore a new dress she had to borrow from Maya. It was a long, white, flowing dress that reached the floor, covering her feet. The one you wouldwear whilst gardeningduring a mid-summer's day. It also came complete with an elegant straw hat with a sunflower-head of the side. It was a beautiful dress. It was absolutely ridiculous on Ritsuko.  
Misato paused her game and turned to face Ritsuko, barely containing her laughter, already. Ritsuko closed her eyes in fury and calmly said, "This was all _your_ fault."  
Misato laughed a really drunken one as she found a crate full of beer, previously in the storage room. Not that it made any sense, but it had the best taste over any other Yebisu after being aged for many years, stored in that room for the times when you really need a Yebisu for the odd celebration or two here and there in the fourteen or so years NERV had been in existence. Misato was polite enough to only take a single crate for the time being. It wouldn't last the night.  
With her eyes still closed, Ritsuko said, "It's your turn to cook again."

Upon hearing this, Gendou, on the other side of the room at his desk, stood up with his arms on the table shouting in his almighty voice, "**Nooooooooo!!!!!**"  
Everyone looked up at Gendou with a sweatdrop. _The hell?_  
Gendou realized his reactionwas a bit over-the-top. He looked around a bit thinking of something to say...  
"Uh... I meant... let Rei do it!" He, himself, formed a sweatdrop at the back of his head that only Kouzou noticed.  
On, yet, the other side of the room, Rei nodded. "Yes, sir."

At the good old kitchen, Rei was preparing to cook. She had a few boxes of Instant Ramen, thanks to Ritsuko, and a big black pot. _Where to begin?_ She thought. She looked at what she had sternly, thinking. Cooking was not the type of textbook she had ever borrowed to study. Sure, she had learnt the names of many vegetarian dishes and pizzas she could order over the phone and could whisper to the guy on the other side, which wouldsend a chilling shiver up his spine like it was a death threat straight out of a slasher film; but she had never even seen a big black pot up close, before. Strangely enough, not many people in the world have had seen a big black pot before that could be out of a McBeth play; yet, there it was. What was Rei to do with it?  
"Do you need a hand, Ayanami?" said a voice from the door.  
Rei looked at the door; the light streaming in from outside showed a silhouette of a boy leaning cooly on the door-frame. The kitchen was quite dark, and quiet, echoing the boy's words for a moment.  
Rei looked at him without expression, and ever so slightly, she nodded.  
Shinji walked in and looked at that she had. "Instant Ramen?" he said to himself, then to Rei. "This is time that you begin to learn how to live."  
Shinji picked up the pot and gestured to it, "Water."

By the end of the day, Rei had had a pot full of cooking Ramen thanks to Shinji. Now, she continued to stir it. As time continued, Shinji indicated that the most common mistake in making instant ramen, these days, is that it has been undercooked.  
"The wheat had not enough time to soak up the water," he said. "So the ramen is not at its best. There are those who may leave the ramen, forgetting for several minutes, as it sits in the pot, or bowl, or cup or whatever they might put it in. The water dilutes the ramen's flavour and ruins its texture, that way. Yet, this is not overcooking, because the water would have cooled down dramatically. I'm no chemistry expert, but I know that ramen is at its consumable worst in such a state. Techniques, though not haven ever been written for any instant foods, become the key to making Instant Ramen a perfection. I've developed my own over the years, and took note of how and how not to stir ramen and whatnot. However, take note of the way you stir it right now. Many people don't stir ramen enough, and also in the wrong way. You stir it like you've been doing it all your life! Fabulous."  
Rei silently took all this in. At last, she was learning something from somebody for the first time in many years instead of from a book (which also was many years ago). To her horror, she soon realized, she was also being complemented for something other than her profession. This stirred her.  
Rei looked at Shinji right in his eyes, yet she couldn't think of much to say, despite knowing, before, that she had something to ask. So, she remained looking at Shinji, who answered her question anyway. "Yeah. With a few more pointers in the other areas of cooking, I'd say you could be the next _me_ - I say this as modestly I can, of course." He was resting his head on his hand, leaning of the bench, smiling. In admiration? In thought? It was a very unusual sight for Rei, yet this Shinji complemented her in her cooking. Now he's looking into her eyes as she cooked.  
She looked back at her pot, not saying a word, and continued to stir.

Shinji had surprised himself, as well. It turned out he could _really_ flirt when he wanted to. Not so long as three minutes later, Shinji was behind Rei, holding her hands and showing her his secret to stirring ramen, his body and hers touching perhaps even intimately. His head leanedover her shoulder. And Rei? Rei rather enjoyed being guided on how to cook by Shinji. She tilted her head a little nearer to Shinji's left shoulder, almost like snuggling it, with a little smile on her face, unseen by Shinji; but Shinji knew she was smiling.  
She was smiling.  
After a moment without talk, Shinji stopped. "Well, I'm afraid we can stir no further," he said, all of a sudden. He let go, reached to the side, and turned off the flame in one quick motion. He looked at Rei with a sad smile. "My work, here, is done," he said, like he knew this moment would come sooner later.  
He did not move but continued to look at Rei's face. Rei looked away to the pot. She dipped her finger in (with clean hands), and tasted it. Her ramen- no, Shinji's ramen was almost magical in her mouth.  
"It's good," she said, turning to Shinji.  
Shinji looked at Rei, now a little uncertain, but proceeded. "Rei," he said, putting a hand on hers, then carefully taking them, leaning closer. His mouth trembled slightly for a second. "Do you know how to love?" An incredibly bold question.  
Rei looked to the side, her eyes downcast, and paused for a second; she thought and replied, "No."  
Shinji came closer and held Rei's chin, letting her face automatically turn to him. With a pause, he said, "Let me show you..."  
He leaned towards Rei. Rei closed her eyes softly. Her own mouth trembled.

Seeing something that was about to happen that she wouldn't believe could happen without breaking the universal flow of possibility, causing the corruption of the universe and its cataclysmic end, Asuka charged into the room and tackled Shinji to the ground. She followed through to punch him and bash him up.  
"YOU PERVERTED HENTAI!!! JACKASS FREAK!! HOW DARE YOU! Etc..." Which was absolutely understandable. What just happened would have seemed, even to the third person of such a situation, utterly impossible.  
Many comical sounds that would normally be found in a Warner Bros. cartoon came as the pulpification of Shinji continued.  
Gendou walked in through the door on time, and Rei turned from the fight to face him.  
"What's this?" said Gendou, without a hint of concern in his voice.  
"It's 'Poor Man's Rama,'" Rei said, reading from the packet.  
"Fine, give me a bowl," he said, and walked out the door with a lovely bowl of Poor Man's Rama a minute later.  
Behind that very door, Misato schemed with an extremely evil smile. "Think _my_ cooking's bad? Hehehe...!" She intended to take revenge after loosing face for being labeled a bad cook the week previous.  
With that, she held a tank of petrol and poured it into a bowl, half filled with her own ramen. Aside from the smell, no one could tell the difference between a typical bowl of ramen and her evil, toxic miscreation of such. She walked after Gendou.

On the other side of NERV HQ, Fuyutsuki heard something on his plug from the Dolby Digital system. He was alarmed, but he knew what he had to do. _It's now up to me to save the day!_

Misato walked up casually behind Gendou, her hips swayed heavily from side to side. She went around slightly and hit Gendou with her butt, making him spill the contents of his bowl on the floor. Typical of Gendou, he glared evilly at Misato... like he could fire her. Misato apologize.  
"Oh, Commander! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean any of this, really! I mean, I... uh!" She pretended to think and said, "Here..." She handed him her bowl. "Have mine and forgive this poor lady with short-sightedness."  
Gendou smiled, suddenly, which would haveknocked a NERV personnel off his guard, spilling detergent on the floor. "Oh, how decent of you."  
He took the bowl and walked off to his desk. At his desk, he sat down with his ramen. He sniffed the bowl for a second... He then took out his chop sticks.

On the side of NERV's Command Center, to the right of Gendou's desk, a tiny figure emerged from the door way and ran up towards Gendou. He could already see Gendou about to eat from the bowl.  
Fuyutsuki can see the moment of truth coming. In slow-motion, Kouzou shouted, "Nooooooooo...!!!" And he made a dramatic, Matrix leap from the causeway right to Gendou's desk.  
Gendou's chop sticks were halfway up to his mouth as Kouzou was in mid-air, flying without guidance towards him. He was many feet from the ground floor, below him, but Kouzou payed no heed.  
It was now or never.  
And it was bullet-time.

Previously, Rei had walked out of the kitchen from all the screaming and bashing, and nearly tripped over a red tank. In an instant, her logic circuits deducted that Misato is going kill Gendou unless Rei can help it. She knew she had roughly 24 seconds till the deadline...  
From under her skirt, she pulled out her flare gun, attached to her upper-outer thigh and readied it.  
She ran.  
Back to Kouzou, still in mid-air/slo-mo, halfway there; Rei slid and entered the room on the other of Gendou's. She held up her gun with two hands, already kneeling whilst sliding along the floor to take aim, and fired two shots.  
_Ch-l-l-i-ck!_ **Kya-a-Bo-o-ommm...!!!** _Ch-l-l-i-ck!_ **Kya-a-Bo-o-ommm...!!!** (Note: "Ch" is pronounced as a German would pronounce it in "To**ch**tor". It is the rendered approximation of what "c-" would sound like in slow motion. And I know what "c-"sounds like in slow motion.)  
In bullet-time, now, the two shots flew through the air, leaving behind shock waves. A flare zipped past Kouzou, who looked at it in slo-mo with stupidity. The second raced up right at Kouzou, and blew up in his butt. Pang!  
"**Yyyooooowww!!!**" Screamed Kouzou and he fell short of Gendou altogether.  
He managed to land on the exposed parts of MAGI and blew the whole thing up in a gigantic explosion. Kouzou was propelled immediately back up at the ceiling and got stuck frontwise in _The Broth_. He continued to scream as the flare illuminated his backside.  
So much for saving the day.

The first flare made its way up. Up to Gendou's bowl.  
With a moment of still suspension, it popped into Gendou's bowl and exploded.

The bowl remained intact, but the whole of Command Center was litten up by the explosion, with the help of MAGI. From within the bowl, a mini-atomic bomb fireball, complete with a mushroom cloud, shot up and continued to shoot up.  
It set Gendou's beard alight. Gendou was motionless as the fireball blew up in his face.

Managing to get away from Asuka, Shinji ran and slid to a halt at the door behind Gendou. "Hey, why is the room so bright in here? Isn't it always dark and cold like my father? What the-?" Shinji noticed that his father's hair was on fire. "Father! No!"  
In another attempt to achieve something out of The Matrix by NERV, Shinji grabbed the fire extinguisher, jumped and rolled in mid-air. He hit the ground next to Gendou and, on his knees, sprayed Gendou's head with foam.

Guess what? Gendou was saved, but the foam that remained clinging to Gendou's face was, somehow, suggestive in a particular way...  
Asuka rolled up after Shinji (intending to continue his pulpification) but was immediately distracted by the other man in question. She laughed.  
"Hey, look! It really _is_ Grumpy Santa! Ha!"  
Gendou, with the foam that gave him the distinct Santa Beard, finally cracked with a girly scream, and cried in his arms, face down on his desk.

Another scream...  
Shinji turned to the source dramatically, searching. _Another person to save?_ His eyes met a glowing butt on the ceiling and he went for it.  
Carrying his extinguisher, he pressed a little button at the side of Gendou's desk, which activated the fire ladder to come out in front of it.  
_NERV's got everything, hasn't it?_ He thought as he climbed up.  
When he finally reached Kouzou's butt, he sprayed it quickly and effectively around, finally putting out Rei's flare. Unfortunately, the foam reacted with _The Broth_, and it started to harden. Before Shinji could do anything, _The Broth_ cracked like Unit-01's mouth-sealant, and Kouzou fell straight down that rather high height.  
Down.  
Down.  
Down...

Kouzou finally hit Maya, braking his fall, and rolled to the side.  
As Maya got up to see what fell on her and bash the hell out of it, Kouzou lay on his side with his head on his hand, quickly and as casually as possible. "Hey, baby, what's up?" He said, trying to smile.  
Maya slapped him.  
"I don't date older men."  
Kouzou was left rubbing his cheek.

He walked up back up, he got up to Gendou and tried to comfort him. Gendou was still sobbing into his arms. The white foam was still in place of his hair.  
Kouzou was distracted by a figure leaning on the doorway next to the desk.

"Hey," said Misato mockingly. "Is it still Christmas?"

* * *

As the credits roll, the music plays "It's Raining Men".  
What was Shinji on? Will Misato remain the evil petrol-wielding antagonist? Will Gendou have to remain in psychiatric care? Will Fuyutsuki ever get credit for doing anything cool? (No.) Can the MAGI be fixed from that fiery fate? Is Rei on the verge of a super-tight personality-changing curve? (Only slightly.) How can I possibly finish off this fic with only one chapter to go...?! (hint hint) 

Guess what? The third week comes next!!! Woohoo!!! Sad thing is that it'll take a while, as it will be as long as the past two weeks and prologue combined. To cater for those who like shorter chapters or have a short attention span, I will be placing intermissions at the appropriate times to suggest for a break to those who need it. You can go for as long as you need, and come back with a clearly labeled book-mark right there for you.  
I don't know exactly when it will come out, but I'll try my best amidst the pile of school work that will continue to pile up in the near future. Wish me luck.

Q&A (note: a lot of the following aren't technically questions):  
**Q** - Seatbelts: "I'm guessing that 'The Broth' Of Doom will have something to do with snow..."  
**A**: Incorrect. It was just an extremely adhesive type of broth that Misato cooked up at random. The main ingredient is, as you'd understand, Ritsuko's Secret Prototype PVA Ultraglue (which she hasn't trademarked yet), but also egg whites. The protein in the eggs reacted with an active ingredient found in Ritsuko's PVA glue in the heat, causing it to suddenly change color (from light blue to brown) and makes it highly reactive to the foam found in fire extinguishers. It looses it adhesive ability greatly, but it is still very thick. The alcohol in the red wine is responsible for containing the horrible smell that would normally tell any sane person that you can't eat this thing. The only thing that I can find that is relevant to the topic of snow is that the melting point is below -30° C (-22° F).  
**Q** - Seatbelts: "as well as possibly mutating into an Angel."  
**A**: Since the protein no longer exists after coming into contact with the PVA Ultraglue, there's no way it could mutate into anything. Sorry. However, the glue is reactive to angel-formed proteins; not that anyone knows that. Hehe.  
**Q** - Seatbelts: "Oh, and what about those 3 Pilots from 'Girlfriend of Steel'? Will they be in this?"  
**A**: I am unfamiliar with this. Here is the list of characters that I know will NOT be in this fic for future reference: Yui, Hikari, Naoko (in person), Kyoko, Unit-03, Keel& other SEELE members, Mana& other Girlfriend of Steel characters, Mayumi, and The Mass Production Evas. Of course, the list is largely incomplete. I am lazy, today.  
**Q** - Seatbelts: "And the 'Directional Sequence' during Shinji's floor mopping was the Konami Code, right?"  
**A**: Yeah, but for _which_ console? (hint hint)  
**Q** - Lone Wulffe: "More, please!"  
**A**: Yes, _way_ more. Muahahahahaha!!!

More will come, but let's hope soon.


	4. Wind

Did I give away to much just from the description?  
Well, it can't be helped. This is, after all, the _final_ week. What makes me nervous is the fact that you may not like it. Yes, I've been nervous every single time, previous, but I have more reason, today. Why? Becuase this is the last week. No, moreover, it is because I have decided to...You can read it for yourself: It's just below the line in italics.  
Sorry if I'm acting weird or different, but I'm honestly slipping into a mild depression at this moment in time. Will try to pull out as soon as possible, of course.  
Anyway, I suggest that one good way to thoroughly enjoy this chapter is to read it out loud in a melodramatic voice. Half British, if you can. I'd give you an example, but this is a piece of literary fiction, isn't it? Just try it. It works very well towards the ending.  
Anyway, you have a lot to read, so I better let you go on with it.  
Good luck!

* * *

_  
Written by William Wong  
Inspired by Nathan Rawlins_

**Week Three - Wind**

It was a hectic week. Shinji fell for Rei. Rei discovered feelings. Misato went evil. Gendou cracked. Sometimes, a NERV personnel would like to stop what they were doing and contemplate how things could have been worse. Usually, they would fail at doing so; they were pretty miserable after Sub-commander Fuyutsuki took over (he's not doing a good job of it) and Gendou Ikari had to get psychiatric counseling. As for Shinji, he never got around to getting to Rei, but he knew he will eventually.

After a long, hard session, Gendou walked out of the ward, feeling really bad for himself. His head hung, looking at the ground, as he exited and noticed a pair of sandals.  
He looked up to see Ritsuko... but no. He saw Yui in her beautiful summer dress. Her golden straw hat and sunflower-head matched elegantly with the white of her dress...  
Gendou immediately turned around and ran back into the ward, crying.  
Things were tough, now. Gendou, perhaps, has turned too sensitive to be able to live a normal day in his life after what happened to his hair. Not that he was normal before he cracked in the first place, of course. It was all too much for him.

Not so very far away, just down the hall, Misato was dragged along the ground towards her holding cell, kicking her legs about and struggling for freedom. The two girls that took her must have been pretty strong as Misato had had a beer just moments ago. In fact, she was just at the cafeteria moments ago, having that mid-day meal issued to all detainees. The food was enjoyable for Misato. The beer was Yebisu. It was probably the highest point of each of the six days she had been held for. Now it was over, and Misato fitfully rolled around, randomly, like a child as she was about to be thrown back into her cell.  
As the doors were locked, Misato tried desperately to get the girls to open up. She had tried bribery for quite some time, but it never worked with these particular girls. The problem laid therein the fact that she was drunk every time she tried to escape, and the bribes boiled down to nothing more than her home-made cooking and sexual favors. At some point, she did hit gold amongst the random babble that she thought up, which was she could get Shinji to perform sexual favors on her behalf (Shinji was the hottest idol in question discussed under the murmurs of female NERV employees in the topic of cute bishounens). However, even that didn't move these girls. The reason lied in their attitude towards Shinji's father...  
_Today,_ thought Misato, _I shall use force!_  
She went to the back of the room and ran full-force at the bars and smashed her head on it. Only a small dint was made on the bars, but Misato's skull must have cracked. "Uhhh..." said Misato, dizzy, "I've had too much beer..."  
She fell back on her bed.  
When she had recovered, Misato racked her brains out to think of any escape plans. She knew she won't escape out of her cell with some odd form of _wit_. (Hell, no!) And she couldn't see any tools laying about the cell to aid her. In fact, the cell was totally bare of anything except for a glass of water and a bolted bed. _Water would be a potential help but I can't think of anything for it except to throw at the girls... and that probably won't work. I might get thirsty if I wasted it, too._  
She patted herself over with her hands and tried to find anything she might have carried with her that would help. At last, her hands landed on something that inspired Misato a great escape plan.  
_Of course! Now, if I just had..._  
And she found what she just needed.  
_Perfect. Muahahaha! Now all I have to do is wait..._  
And so, Misato somehow thought up a great escape plan whilst drunk...

Her chance came two hours later. Misato had known only one weak spot for the girls, and this weak spot was currently walking out into view.  
Gendou emerged.  
"Hey, look! It's Gendou Ikari!" Shouted Misato, pointing in his direction.  
Gendou looked cluelessly towards the source of the noise and saw two girls charging up to him like mad wearing 'We Love Gendou!' shirts and hats! They also seemed mad enough to rip Gendou's clothes right off if he let them, and so he freaked like hell.  
He ran back into the ward again, screaming, "I want my mummy!" and started throwing stuff at them to get away. He happened to throw his jacket at them and the two girls screamed crazily!  
They started to fight over it. They scratched. They tug. And they punched. Which was a bad combination. They hit each other's heads at the same time and fell unconscious.  
Misato watched, amused, and then realized it was her now cue to escape.  
She started to rip her bed sheets into a long strip and put it between her legs. _I wonder if I've been watching too much Shanghai Noon..._ she thought as she pissed carefully on it; the purpose of which was to get it to be thoroughly wet so as to make the cloth unbreakable.  
As she did so, she casually leaned over to take a drink of water from the glass...  
_**SHIT!**_

_Only people who watched Shanghai Noon would get this. Sorry._

  
None-the-less, Misato continued as planned. She reached through the bars and managed to get hold of a wooden "We Love Gendou" sign and broke the top bit off. _How ironic..._ she thought as she wrapped the wetted sheet around two bars and tied it onto a knot. _To have a pro-Gendou device be turned into that which shall end him. Muahahahahaha!_ She stuck the wooden stick into the sheet and twisted. Using the strength she developed from episode 7, she twisted the thing till the bars were bent, enough for her to slip through.  
She slipped through.  
The lady has escaped.  
With a new, profound sense of arrogance, Misato went up to the Psychiatric Ward and looked in to see Gendou curled up on the bed, hiding behind a large teddy bear. Misato snickered. She pulled out the fire lighter and a petrol tank from within her jacket, and unscrewed the lid.  
Laughing evilly, she spilt a trail of petrol on the ground and threw the tank onto the other side of the room!  
She lit the petrol and ran. 

**Intermission 1 - Burning**

In the elevator, Shinji and Rei stood silent, apart. There had been little communication between the two since Rei caused Shinji's father to become unstable. Shinji didn't particularly mind, actually, but this awkward silence prevailed. Shinji looked at Rei and thought. He had wanted to talk her before, and he knew this was his chance. But talk to her about what...? He asked the first question that came to mind.  
"Do you ever think about death, Rei?"  
Rei replied, "Yes."  
"Do you hate death?"  
Rei paused and thought seamlessly. "Not especially."  
"Oh," said Shinji, and decided to leave it there. This went nowhere.  
"But we would not want to lose you, Shinji," she added. Shinji looked back at her in question. What is she trying to say? "Who, then, would pilot Unit-01?"  
Shinji looked back at his feet disappointingly.  
"And who, then, will complete the universe as a whole and as nothing? Nothing goes without a replacement, though not necessarily in chronological order or in the same form. This is what makes what we are: different; and this is what allows events to happen: through a chain of actions and reactions. Both predictable and both too infinite to measure. What ever happens is to do with fate - no matter how meaningless, and is unavoidable. This makes creation possible, and death inevitable. It all amounts, in the end, to nothing. The thing that came out of nothing can only be equal to it, and only go back to it in incomprehensible fluctuations. Thus our fate, in the end,is to return."  
Shinji thought deeply and looked back up. It was not so much as herincomprehensiblephilosophical thought than the words "who, then, will complete the universe" that stirred him. Perhaps it could also imply that he must complete not just the universe, but maybe also the individuals in it? And perhaps it might also mean he, alone, must also complete one individual in particular. It was that that made him think, actually.

The elevator shook as an explosion was heard. It shook violently. Shinji and Rei held on to stop from falling over. When the noise had died down, Shinji quickly pressed the open button in alarm.  
The elevator doors opened and revealed a charred, ruined hall, partially ablaze with debris lying about. The lights were out, and the fires lit the room a deathly red; not the passive-type death, but death like that omnipresent presence of a being that could send one to it. Shinji stepped out and looked about, "What the hell happened?"  
He realized that this was the hall where his father currently resided! Now, with fear in his eyes, Shinji raced into the burning ward and bent down low, looking. Rei followed close by and they found Gendou crouched into a fetal position behind a bear. Shinji was amazed to see his father wasn't even burnt!  
He saw that the large teddy bear that Gendou hid behind had a tag with a sign saying, "Uninflammable."  
Shinji shook his head in a fleeting feeling of bewilderment and started to drag his father out to safety.  
Halfway out of the ward, Shinji noticed several gas cylinders marked 'Hydrogen' amidst a lake of flames.  
Shinji yelled, "Who the hell would leave a couple of hydrogen tanks in a place like this!?"  
Rei eyed Shinji as she helped Gendou along. "Fate has come..."

Shinji can tell that hydrogen and flames don't mix without cancelling each other out including its surrounding objects, so he knew he had to get out fast.  
"Rei! You get to the elevator and open it up! I'll drag my father after you!"  
Rei nodded and went off. Shinji pulled on Gendou's arm across the ground; all the while, Gendou cluelessly struggled to get away. "No! I want my Popo!!!"  
Shinji can't let him, so he pulled at Gendou, not knowing how long until the hydrogen would explode. It was an appallingly slow and difficult task, and the fact that there is now an indefinite amount of time before the fiery halls that Shinji is stumbling along on, and everything in it, shall be incinerated, burned in Shinji's racing mind.  
He was half-way down the hall to the elevator.  
He saw Rei urging him to hurry. "It'll go off any second, now! Come on!"

Shinji sweated and sensed he won't make it at this rate. He sensed that, now, fate is having its own way. Already, the elevator doors began to close. Time waits not, and fate leaves none.  
In his last attempt to save his father, Shinji gathered his strength left over, picked Gendou right off the ground and hurled him into the elevator with god-like force. A feat that Shinjiwill seeminglyneverbe able to do again.

Gendou hit the elevator walls, and the doors began to close. Rei saw Shinji for the last time as a dark figure in the leaping flames, standing weak and retired. No will nor strength was there for his existence, like his purpose was already served: To save his father. The doors closed shut and the final explosion's shock waves ripped through a second after...

The elevator rose up carefully and slowly. Nothing was heard after the explosion but for the low hum of the elevator and the ticking of the floor-keeper.  
Rei leaned back in the corner and put her hands on her face, covering her eyes.  
She wept, managing only to whisper, "_Ikari-kun..._"  
A drop of tear hit the elevator floor near her feet.  
Gendou, on the ground, also did this in the same spirit.  
"My fangirls..."

The door opened and revealed a lone hallway. Similar to all others it would usually open to only the previous one now ceased to exist.  
Rei and Gendou stumbled out silently, one after the other. It would seem as though there was nothing they could do. True, there wasn't. So they did nothing.  
As they did so, a pacing sound came into audibility, and got closer. Rei did not respond to it.  
For a while, Rei reflected on Shinji's decision to save Gendou at the cost of his own life. Now that she thought about it, Shinji had saved Gendou's life many times. Twice in the past two weeks, in fact. Like when he kicked the bowl away before Gendou was about to digest _The Broth_. Or when Gendou's hair was on fire, and he had to extinguish it. And now that Rei thought about it, Gendou had not once praised Shinji for it. He never even acknowledged it. He cursed Shinji for ruining his dinner, he had a mental breakdown when he got teased for looking like Santa, now he's complaining that Shinji didn't save his fangirls. Had Shinji's effort and life gone to waste for him?  
Soon, Asuka ran around the corner and spied Rei, there.  
"Hey, what the hell happened?" shouted Asuka as she made her way down. "Don't tell me Wondergirl blew up the cafeteria!" She said more or less directly to her than in third person. "And where is that bloody Baka? He was supposed to be cooking today, too.  
"I want my danish! And my Big M! Where's my dinner?"  
Rei was looking at the ground, face unseen by Asuka. She whispered, "He's gone..."  
Asuka looked at Rei strangely, for a second. "I knew it! I knew you'll scare Shinji off! Where the hell did he run off to?"  
Rei said nothing, but only looked into Asuka's eyes.  
And she saw it. Asuka saw that helpless and tearful face... The face of loss.  
Gendou, slouched in a corner, moaned to no one in particular, "And he didn't save my fanclub..."  
At last, it hit Asuka. Her face was white. Her expression was of a shocked disbelief - stillness. "Liar..." she said, directed to Rei. It was not aggressive. It was not in conviction. Rei did nothing but look back down again.  
Asuka fell slowly and weakly against the wall. Her breath was heavy. Her mind raced while she, the conscience, can only observe the blur that tried to reach a conclusion. What can she do? What can she believe? When it done so, she thumped heavily at the wall in response. Her eyelids were clenched.  
"**LIAR!!!**"  
And she ran.

Asuka tore through the pathways of NERV and came to her room. The room was dark - unlit. No light shined in except through the door that opened up. Asuka fell into her bed and curled up. There was no lie that could have resided in Rei's eyes. Shinji was gone. He was gone.  
Faint sobs were heard. She didn't want anyone to hear it; not even she wanted to hear it, yet it came, none-the-less.

Misato, who just happened to be in the room noticed and walked up to her with a can of beer in her hand.  
"There, there..." she said, comfortingly. "It'll be alright..."  
"I'm not crying!" shouted Asuka, just once lifting her head from within her arms, spraying tears.  
Misato came up real close to where Asuka's face should be with a strange look on her face. "Hey, Ms. Grumpy Girl," she said in a low, mocking voice. "When life gets you down, you know what you gonna do?"  
"And what if it was death that got you down?" Asuka shouted under her arms.  
"_Ha!_" chuckled Misato. "You mean that Gendou?!"  
"I know!" Said Asuka, beginning to emerge from her arms. "It was that Baka's fault! He bloody killed himself to save his father! What was in his mind!?"  
Misato's big grin began to fade hesitantly and turned into a shocked frown at this. Like Asuka's expression when she got the news, it was stillness. Like the shock wanted to stay for a little longer, leering at you literally in the face. But, for Misato, it was not because one died. It was because one didn't. Misato drank her last bit of beer, still with the aimless eyes, and fell back in shock. "No... No! NO!"  
Asuka replied by digging her head into her arms again. Misato cried. She saw what had happened, now. She had made another mistake... In a quavering voice, she thumped and shouted, "That asshole Gendou is still alive!"  
Her hand crushed that empty beer can.

Back up in Command Center, the place panicked orderly. Radioed voices piled. People ran so and so. The whole place was much busier without the MAGI. The Dolby Digital Surround Sound® 17.4 Speaker/Microphone System, however, were still connected and functioning, meaning Kouzou began crying in the middle of everything. "Sub-commander!" cried Hyuga as he happened to pass by. "What are you doing!? The angel will come in less than 7 hours! Where are the pilots?"  
Kouzou leapt wildly at Hyuga - madness and tears in his eyes - looking even more sinister in the red, flashing lights, and shouted, "**Shinji's gone!**"  
"**He's run off!?**"  
"**HE'S DEAD!**"  
"**NOOOOOOOOO...!!!**" Hyuga's huge scream echoed in surround sound throughout the Geofront.

As for Kouzou, he ran off madly, shouting, "Who's gonna save us all? How will Asuka get out of her depression? Will Rei ever find true love? Can Misato stop her evil? Will the MAGI ever be restarted again? Are there any Gendou fans left on this miserable little planet? Find out next time, IN HELL!!!"  
With that, he jumped off the causeway, and plummeted down a rather high height.

**Intermission 2 - Ashes to dust**

Amongst all the panicked screams, the running footsteps, and flashing lights, a figure stooped down in the ruined rubbles of the MAGI. Sifting through the scrap metal and debris. Ritsuko stopped when she found what she was looking for, and gave a sigh, standing up. She held up the object into the light, above her head. It was a brain. Ritsuko knew whose it was. It could be described as a grizzly sight, how the oily moisture glistened in the light, a silhouette in the misty air. But when one truly looked at it, it became a thing of beauty. Looking up, Ritsuko talked to it.  
"To be, or not to be? That is the question."  
The panic and noise were nothing more than distant whisperings at the back of her head as Ritsuko gave this touching monologue, "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of Instrumentality... Or to take arms against a sea of Angels?  
"And by opposing, end them?  
"To die, to sleep no more..."  
Her thoughts came naturally. Ritsuko's face stiffened as she knew what had to be done, and she squashed the brain in her hand. "Let them come!"

Ritsuko looked embarrassingly around her as she realized how messy it had gotten in her hand, and looked for a place to wipe the pulp off. She saw Gendou's coffee mug, and she quickly wiped it into that.  
All of a sudden, Gendou walked into the Command center to the right of her, sniffling and wiping a tear out of his eye with a handkerchief, oblivious to the flashing red lights and everyone around him. He saw his only way of comfort, and walked towards the mug.  
"I need my coffee..."  
When Gendou took the mug off the table and looked inside it; he saw brain matter...  
As if a flash of a distant memory came across him, Gendou saw the image of Ristuko's mother. He jerked back, dramatically, as if he burnt his hand once again, and shouted in raging fury at the white coffee mug, "**I rejected you once; I can reject you again!**"  
He made an angry power-up scream like he would shoot a beam out of his hands and flung the mug away! The half-coffee/half-brain contents stayed in the mug, splashing violently, until the mug landed on Maya's head. The boiling coffee got into Maya's hair and burnt her head. It seered into her scalp, painfully.  
Maya reacted like the hand of Lilith had passed through her. She screamed a blood-curdling scream, she clutched her head but pulled at her hair at the same time: eyes wide.  
Everyone in the Command Center laughed heartily.  
Maya came back to some sort of sense from being stuck on the spot, and began running about the place until she came to Fuyutsuki's bucket of water; and she stuck her head into it. A great sizzling and a cloud of steam rose out from the bucket like a sigh of her relief.  
Gendou laughed as well, lightly, and began to calm down, wiping a humorous tear from his eye.  
"Ah... That makes me feel much better." Gendou chuckled a bit to himself once again, and put his glasses back on.  
Everyone in the Command Center promptly resumed their panicked state. Still wanting some humor from NERV's staff again, Gendou grabbed Kouzou's mug of coffee and poured it on Maya's head. Maya reacted in exactly the same way once again, ran around and dunked her head in the bucket again. But no one laughed. Gendou looked up disappointingly at the people who paid no attention to it, and grunted a sigh.

Now, Maya has realized that the Kouzou's yellow bucket was stuck on her head. She jumped off the floor and staggered around, swinging her arms in the air.  
"It's dark! I hate the dark!" She cried.  
Without knowing, she whacked Gendou, knocking him into a rolling chair and sending him down the other side into a giant mirror (installed just yesterday) with a thud. The mirror wobbled dangerously, towering over Gendou, though he was unconscious, after hitting it head-on. It was gigantic - covering the entire wall of that side. Had it broke into shards, the Command Center would become the world's most dangerous dodge-ball arena - or version of thereof.  
All of a sudden, Misato walked into the Command Center on the highest level, carrying a full-on heavy artillery like something out of a Schwarzenegger movie, and put up two machine guns in her arms. She looked mad. In both ways. With a squeeze or two of the triggers, she let rip a round of bullets into the mirror!  
The mirror fell and shattered into over a million pieces, dangerously flying in all directions. The NERV personnel were all screaming and running for cover.  
It was real bad. The pieces were literally everywhere, bouncing around the walls and floor.  
Rei came in but to find she was a little too late. She saw, to her right, Gendou lying unconscious on the floor at the other side of the room, surprisingly without much of a scratch. She looked up to her left to see Misato laughing mercilessly, and now holding a grenade in her hand.  
Rei screamed, but in slow-motion.

As she ran up to the top level where Misato was; it was like the many pieces of mirror were aiming to get her, flying around her like a swarm of large, evil wasps.  
Pieces were reflected off the walls and other surfaces like high-bounce balls.  
Rei received small stings and scratches from some of the pieces that dug into her skin.  
And now, Misato was throwing grenades at Rei, seeing her as a threat. Misato screamed evilly, chucking one grenade after another. Rei did her best to dodge each grenade. Each exploding and releasing an explosion of glass and debris within dangerous proximity of her. Hurt, Rei still continued. Cut and bloody.  
At last, Rei had reached Misato's level. She rolled across the floor, bounded up to Misato and kicked her last grenade away, landing elsewhere, unexploded.  
Slow-motion ceased.

Misato saw Rei rise up from the floor defiantly, staring at Misato as if to say "One false move, and you're dead."  
Misato saw this, and made a move.  
Wham! Misato whipped out a concealed blade from her thigh and swung her arms across Rei's face. The blade slashed at Rei's left eye. Rei screamed in bloody pain, holding her eye as fluids dripped out, becoming redder and blood-redder.  
Misato whipped out a pair of Uzis, one pointing at Rei and the other at Gendou, down below.  
Rei paused and let her left eye go, looking up at Misato.  
If she is too slow, both her and Gendou will be dead.  
Now, she saw her last chance.  
In one last, powerful attempt, Rei began a slow-motion sequence. She fell back and back-sweeped Misato off her feet with her legs.  
The Uzi managed to rip into Rei's arm as Misato fell back; but as she landed, her leg kicked Rei's head with tremendous force.  
Rei flew back to the wall, hitting it heavily. Misato pulled out a dagger from her leg, screaming madly, and jumped at Rei! Holding onto each other's arms in a clashing struggle, they rolled back down the stairs. Rolling over each other and finally against the wall at the bottom...  
Rei was held up against the wall and Misato screamed one last time, holding the dagger roughly against Rei's throat.  
Rei held her own arms - her functioning arm supporting the other.  
Misato had the vantage. Rei was in pain.

Silence.  
Rei looked up at Misato, unopposing; looking for the Misato she thought she had known. From that look in her eyes, Misato took a moment to realize what she had done. Her eyes remained still, locked into Rei's. Her face changed as moisture grew in Rei's eyes.  
"It's me!" Said Rei with tears. "It's your Rei!"  
Misato saw Rei's eyes. With a silent shock on her face, she began to feebly return from her frozen position over Rei. Though she was intending to eliminate her, and she could have, Rei - herself - changed Misato.  
"Don't you know your Rei?" Rei said, looking for Misato.  
Misato fell slowly back, dropping her dagger and leant heavily against the wall; exhausted and ashamed.  
Ever so slowly, Misato tried to talk, "I can't do this, Rei..." Misato stared desperately into space. Misato's will had all but gone.  
"I know," said Rei as she tried to get off, clutching her hand. "It's all wrong... By rights we shouldn't even be here."  
Rei got up and looked over the railing, down at the ruins of the Command Center like she was searching for a light in all this darkness. The NERV staff began to emerge slowly from the wrecks, cut and bruised.  
"But we are."  
Rei stared off into the distance. "It's like in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ms. Katsuragi. Full of darkness and angels there were. And, sometimes, you wished it wasn't true. Because how can the world come to this?  
"How can we destroy God's messengers and still still be allowed to live?  
"But in the end, it's just a way. A path to another world; Instrumentality as it is. Even mankind has to pass. A new world will come. And when they go, they will see to completion. That's why the Dead Sea Scrolls will be fulfilled: to give us comfort; even if the world is this much messed up.  
"But I think, Ms. Katsuragi, the world isn't really messed up. It isn't. The world, right now, is simply following the words of the Dead Sea Scrolls, even if we try to stop it. Even if we try to delay the inevitable... because we felt it was all wrong..."  
"Why are we trying to stop it, then, Rei?" Asked Misato weakly.  
Rei looked back and pulled Misato up, looking into her eyes. "Because Mankind is stupid. And I thinkwe might as well let it go according to the scripts."  
Misato looked up sadly at Rei for a moment, like she was slowly realizing the truth behind life's existence... They didn't deserve to. And they won't.

**Intermission 3 - From the ashes a fire shall spring**

"Rei, that was the stupidest speech I've ever heard."  
Rei and Misato was puzzled for an instant. Where did that voice come from?  
They spun around to look up to the top of Command Center where Gendou used to sit and saw a bright, white figure. Too bright to see, like the object behind it would be too much to comprehend. One can only try to hear that voice to understand what it was. That is, if they didn't already know who it was.  
"Did you get that shirt of yours bleached, Shinji?"  
He got off the desk, away from the bright MAGI projector lights, and revealed himself! In all his glory.  
"Shinji? Shinji..." the boy in white said in thought.  
"Don't you tell me you forgot your name, Shinji? Now _that_ would have to be the most stupidest thing I've ever heard," said Misato.  
"Yeah, I'm still Shinji," he said. Then in a change of tone, "And I come back to you, now, at the turn of the time..."  
All of another sudden, Fuyutsuki came up, running around with a cardboard box on his head, shouting, "It's dark! I hate the dark!" And knocked Shinji off the entire floor. Shinji plummeted down a rather high... yeah.  
Shinji landed on a fire-ladder that was laying on the floor like a sea-saw. The grenade on the other end was propelled into the air, and came back down towards Shinji. Everyone gasped in slow-motion. The Dolby Digital Surround Sound® 17.4 Speaker/Microphone System played tense music, building ever so slowly yet as quick as the grenade falling.  
Shinji looked up at the grenade _ring_, in slow-motion, and thought, _With all this happening, I feel a strong urge to... WHAT MOVIE WAS THIS FROM!?_  
Shinji has fallen flat on his back, now, and he stuck his finger up into the air. The grenade _ring_ fell and planted itself onto Shinji's finger, but the grenade flew off. It rolled towards Gendou, and came to a stop before him. Gendou had finally awakened at this point, and the last thing he saw was the grenade. He drew a sharp breathe to scream, but the grenade went off first.

The grenade blast cleared, but Gendou was not there.  
In fact, as everyone looked dumbfoundedly at the blast site, Shinji had to give a cough to draw attention to him and Gendou at his right side. Everyone stared in wonder at the impossible sight and just said, "... How?"  
Shinji looked smart-aleckly at everyone. "Like I said: 'at the turn of the time.' What, you thought it was a typo?"

_The original quote from Gandalf in The Two Towers was "And I come back to you, now, at the turn of the tide."  
Only people who have watched Lord of the Rings would get this. Sorry._

Everyone still stared at Shinji and said, "Huh?"  
Shinji closed his eyes, smiling faintly, and announced, "Let me show you: Flashback, please!"

In a flash, the MAGI screens activated, flooding the place with light, then dying down to an image of a fiery corridor.  
Shinji looked down the corridor, the elevator doors shut in slow-motion. Shinji stood weakly, his face with sweat and dark marks and a sad, exhausted face. All of a sudden, all still in slow-motion, two girls popped out of nowhere and came up to Shinji. They didn't seem too slow in motion. One girl raised her index finger to Shinji's forehead and touched it lightly. Her fingertip glowed like ET and Shinji came out of his slow-motion trance.  
"Huh?"  
The girls leaned into Shinji's face with giant grins on their faces and said together, "You have saved His life: We are eternally grateful!"  
With that, the girls grabbed Shinji's hand and swept him away. The hydrogen tanks blew up slowly. Warping and disintergrating the walls. Shinji was well away into the corridors to even witness it explode. It was a blur. Too fast to see in which direction he was being led to. Perhaps it could be described as a Willy Wonka ride in a boat. But before Shinji could think where he saw such an old movie, he realized he was in a bathroom.  
Shinji looked around him and saw the two girls looking at him. He thought it was time to say something. "Alright, girls, I think it's about time to tell me what the hell's going on. Who the hell are you?"  
One with the brown hair came up and said, enthusiastically, "We're Gendou's fangirls!"  
Shinji looked at her then the other with a cocked eyebrow and said, "No, really, who the hell are you?"  
The girl smiled, closing one eye and said, "You're quick, Shinji..."  
"No, I'm one still with sanity."  
"Hah. Well, to tell you the truth, we're not just fangirls," she said with a grin. "We're actually multi-dimensional beings come here to look after and guard Gendou Ikari. Let's just say he's... important. We have many special powers. In fact, the one you've just experienced was us slowing down time. We won't let you in on what else we can do, though."  
Shinji's left eyebrow raised even higher upon this.  
The other girl looked impatiently at Shinji. "You know. Like teleportation, crazy hair styles, glowing fingers. That whole sortta genie-in-a-bottle thing."  
Shinji didn't believe a word of it.  
The girl closed her eyes, pressing her lips together. "Okay, then. Go ahead and wish for something."  
Shinji paused for a second, then said, "Okay, I want a Big Mac."

_Click_  
The girls transported to a McDonalds venue and waited in line.  
"One Big Mac," said the girl with green hair.  
"You want fries with that?"  
She looked across to her partner. "Sure."  
_Click_

The girls appeared before Shinji again. The brown-haired girl held out her hand. "Pay up."  
"WHAT?!"  
"I left my purse near the hydrogen tanks."  
Shinji grumbled as he reached into his pocket with one hand and pulled out a ten dollar note.  
"No change for you, boy," she said, snatching it. With a snap, a Big Mac and fries popped into Shinji's arms. "Believe us now?"  
Shinji was awed. "Wow... This truly is the work of beings from the _n_th dimension! I even had to pay!" He exclaimed.

Shinji had munched down most of the food, and the girl with green hair came up. "Now, I will make my message clear for you," she said whilst Shinji just looked up from his fries. "Clear and simple. We have now given you the power to slow down time."  
Shinji nodded a few times with his mouth full.  
"The reason is because you have saved His life: We are eternally grateful. The other reason is because we need to take a lunch break back at our _n_th dimension, which will take about two days, here. Your mission, now, is to protect Gendou, and keep him alive, _or else_."  
"Or else? Why?" asked Shinji, swallowing that last of his food.  
"Because Gendou is very _special_."  
"Okay... and the else part?"  
The girl leaned closer with narrow, slitted eyes. "You know the Big Mac?"  
"The one I ate?" Asked Shinji cluelessly.  
The girl leaned closer, her eyes then wide with malice, then becoming slitted just as quickly, "It will turn into something very bad..."  
Shinji gulped once, and wished he hadn't... One thought came into mind... "Misato's cooking...?!"  
The girls threw their heads back and laughed evilly.  
"**NOOOOOO**...!!!" Cried Shinji, loudly. Misato's cooking! His only hate sprung from his only love!

_In Romeo and Juliet, there was a quote that goes "My only love sprung from my only hate!" Have you read it, before?_

The girls stopped laughing for the green-haired girl to add, "But the chips will be fine."  
Shinji nodded. "Oh, okay."  
The brown-haired girl on the right leaned in towards Shinji's face, holding up her finger as if to warn him about something but all with a cute smile and a winked eye. "Now, about that power. There are some limitations to it. You can only slow down time for 5 seconds in real-time. Also, you can only slow down to a ratio of 1:10, one real-time second can slow down to as far as ten relative-seconds. As well as that, your power cannot be used when you're in an Eva 'cos the A10 nerve would be occupied whilst in snych. (Yeah, you thought you'd get away that easy?) It gets a little messy once we get into quantum physics and time distribution at near-light speeds and all the rest. Not that we can't travel faster than light, of course, we have our counter-powers and so forth. But we're getting off topic, now. Gravity may still be the same only when you are not in contact with any surfaces that are in contact with the ground that is over roughly 1.46 kilograms per cubic meter, or whilst you're at or above the relative speed of 7.894 kilometers per hour. If you happen to be American, you'll need to find some mathematician to convert it to the imperial system for you. I've never figured out how they're supposed to know their inches and feets, you know: 'What the hell...?' Anyway, you seem to be Japanese enough to understand what I meant. Where was I? Yes, your limitations. Well, the only thing for me to add is that you must have 'recovery periods' of one tenth your power usage period between each shot.  
"Get it?"  
"Yeah..." said Shinji, not getting it. "But how do I use it?"  
The girl fell back grunted. "What do you think?"  
"Like uh... do I have to do some voodoo chant thingy? Like 'by the power of the moon and that...'"  
"What do you think we are?! A couple of chicks from some shoujo anime or something?"  
"Er, well..."  
The girl grunted again and closed her eyes. "Okay," she said, slowly, "think of your mind... as an XBox controller. - _That's how it is!_ - Now, to get into slow-mo mode, you must pull the right, black trigger."  
Shinji thought about this and said, "What does the L Trigger do?"  
"It's the'brake' button."  
"Oh."  
"The human mind works well with the controller, subconsciously," added the other girl, "but it usually never figures out particular buttons that cause it to do things that, by your standards, is rather paranormal."  
"Oh, right..."  
"Now," said the first girl in a new tone. "If you don't mind, we must go forth to luncheon."  
With a zap from her fingers, the girls vanished with a flash and a puff of smoke. Shinji was left coughing and wheezing, clearing away the smoke. When he had settled down, he looked about himself and, like a boy in a candy store, ran around gleefully, trying out his new power. "Lift off the ground, pull the switch... Lift off the ground, pull the switch... Lift off the ground, pull the switch..."

Later, Shinji was going up the elevator. He couldn't wait to tell everyone. As he went up, he began to hum with the elevator music...  
_Wait, this is the music for Misato's Theme! Who composed it? I love it!  
_Shinji hummed along as he listened to the cheerful music, waiting to get up to Command Center. When he came to, the elevator opened up to reveal a renovation that only Misato could do, and Rei standing, doing a speech. Shinji scratched his head about this, but, as Rei concluded, he stood on top of Gendou's desk. The MAGI projectors happened to be pointing in his direction, illuminating Shinji like a sun.  
As the light flooded the Command Center, the MAGI projection (in present-time) turned off.  
Everyone in the room recovered their eyesight. They saw Shinji standing there again on the ladder with Gendou by his side.

**Intermission 4 - Where there is wind...**

  
"So, do you understand?" Asked Shinji to everyone after that ten minute enlightenment.  
Everyone in the Command Center nodded dumbly at Shinji, slowly, then shook their heads, slowly. Shinji scratched his head, "Hmmm..."  
Fuyutsuki popped out, behind Shinji with a wide grin and said, "So, anyone want to hear _my_ survival story?"  
"NO!" shouted everyone.  
Fuyutsuki looked at he floor with a frown. "Oh..." he whined.  
"Well," Shinji said wih a smile, "I guess you're all glad I'm back, right?"  
"Hm! Like anyone would give a damn about the Baka," said Asuka, appearing on the top-most level of the Command Center.  
"Wait a minute," Fuyutsuki said, turning around, "last time I heard from you, you were crying in depression--"  
"Shut up, old man!" Shouted Asuka, throwing her shoe at him. "And you were sneaky enough to spy on a girl?! Just wait till I get down there!"  
Fuyutsuki feebly rubbed his head where the shoe hit him, deciding not to say anything.  
In the end, everyone knew everything wasworked out and back to normal. 

Not a bad end to the day. In fact, not a bad end to the three weeks they had to endure in NERV. Gendou learned to get a new personality, Misato learnt not to leave the protagonist without making sure he's dead (no matter how anti-protagonist he is), Rei learnt how to cook, Ritsuko learnt what not to wear, Kouzou learnt no one gives a damn to what happens to him, Asuka learnt bad opera, and Shinji learnt the way of the slow-motion.  
Not bad at all...  
But even then, there was something that didn't feel right; even after that ordeal. They have survived the elements... but why didn't they feel some kind of relief? Something wasstill lurking at the back of their minds... Was something left out, that was incomplete? Had they forgotten something? No one was able to figure out what it was, as they walked up to the exit, knowing full well they were no longer snow-bound.

When they have discovered the doors were rusted in, they thought they found out that was it. Thus, before disbanding, once and for all, back to their normal lives, they had to go berserk one last time.

A large group of NERV staff held an overly large statue sideways like a battering ram, and all shouted as they ran, full-force against the doors. The gigantic finger of the statue - big as the door itself - made a large dent in it.  
Ritsuko and Maya held up their Japanese fans and started the chant for everyone to pull back and run at the door again.  
Gendou sulked in the corner. Not quite because his new personality made him chronically depressed. It just so happened that the statue was that of Gendou himself, holding his finger up like some great leader and a having serious face. Half like the Statue of Liberty, half like Hitler. Now, it was being damaged against the shutters.  
"The finger's pretty good," commented Maya as the finger made a concave bulge in those doors.  
"Yeah," Ritsuko replied. "That's what you call a good hand job."

At last, the finger tore open the doors like aluminum foil. As the statue was taken away, everyone gazed amazedly outside, into the bright light...  
The hole revealed a nightmarish desert Tokyo-3, empty and windy. Very windy. Wind was everywhere. A hollow, windy sound was all that could be heard amongst the silence of this world. The sky seered powerfully blue where the dust of the wind dared showed it. The wind smelt of an unsettling urine whiff. Too subtle to tell, too present to ignore. The buildings showed the small signs of corrosion like metal rusting in acid. Not a single living soul could be seen to inhabit this dead city.

"I think we opened the wrong door," said Fuyutsuki.  
As everyone stepped out, they gazed out into the mountains. It was still green and gay, there. They were gazing west, at the sunset, and they saw something on the mountains... Respectively, it was a gigantic figure. Silhouetted on the horizon.  
There was a moment of great silence as they looked upon this thing...  
What it was... was not something they had trouble identifying... It was something they had trouble believing.  
"It's a giant Marshmallow man..." commented Misato, slowly, disbelievingly.  
After another silent moment, Ritsuko shouted in all conviction, "It's the angel!"  
So that's what they forgot about... Everyone looked that the giant, puffy figure of a giant marshmallow man, waddling across the mountain in all slowness. Their reaction was: "Awww, It's so cute!"  
As if to say "no," the thing gave an emission of wind out into a part of the mountain. The mountain turned into a dull, brown color, and crumbled. And like a shockwave, the sound of a fart of Biblical proportions was heard throughout Tokyo-3!  
Everyone, there, was horrified into shock.  
"**Nooooooooo...!!!**"  
And just then, perhaps stirred by their screams of despair, two figures came up to them, all ragged and dirty. They had suffered this for the past week, and were the only people in the city in sight.  
They were gasping as they ran.  
One with glasses shouted, "We claim Sanctuary! You hear me?! SANCTUARY!!!" The two boys were Kensuke and Toji.  
"Let's get outta here!!!" Cried Toji, waving his arms madly about.  
Everyone of NERV agreed and ran back into NERV in horror, sealed the door, and ran back into the depths of Dogma. They all ran together like a pack of bulls. Even a big dust-cloud trailed them. They didn't know where to go, nor where they were going. They just went where they thought everyone else was. Far away from the evil sight; the wind, the sun.  
"What should we do!? What should we do!?!" Cried Fuyutsuki, unnecessarily.

Through the halls of NERV, down the long elevator lines and through into the unlit places of NERV they ran. As they went on, they came to a large room. What caught their eyes was a giant, half-grown, glowing Lilith taking a lunch break.

Lilith took the Lance of Longinus out of herself, and held it with her left hand. With her right, she pulled a large blob of herself out into a ball. With the lance, she stuck the blob on to the end and held it over a large, crackling fire... like a marshmallow.

"That's it!"  
It was then that Gendou knew what they had to do.

* * *

As the credits roll, the music plays "Without Me".  
What the hell was all that? Why did this end so abruptly? Where the hell was the story supposed to be taking us?! 

Well, you see, the thing is... That's the end.

What the Goddam hell?!?!?!

Well, the Elements were Water, Fire and Wind and each took place on each week. This is the final week, so the elements end here.

But seriously, what the Goddam hell?!?!?!

Don't worry, this also has an epilogue.

Oh... Wait, I'm still supposed to ask the reader more questions, then, right?

Exactly.

Can they endure this angel's farting powers? Will Shinji actually go on to do anything with Rei or what? Isn't Rei dying from blood loss on her left arm? Will Fuyutsuki finally give up trying? (Yes.) How does Lilith get involved? Will this become an epic battle sequence? (Yes.) Will the writer dare try to kill off another character again? (hint hint) Or are more characters coming into the fic, this late?

I hope you enjoyed it. Maybe have a favorite moment or something? Send along a review, even if it's just to tell me you've read it. Maybe tell me what you thought was your favorite scene.  
On a side note, I believe that what is following will become the largest epilogue in the history of epilogues... It will be longer than this chapter, alone.  
Bear with me...

Thus, the final Q&A session (or not)- Seatbelts, it's a shame you didn't send along some questions:  
**Q** - Lone Wulffe: "this has got to be one of the best combinations of romance and humour I have ever read!"  
**A**: Weird thing was that I wasn't intending for a romance to occur that deeply, but there we go. The romance was supposed to be a laughable item, but it seems I'll have to take it seriously. Never wrote a romance before. I'm glad I've done it as well as you make it.  
**Q** - Crimson Arrow: "You got something good going here, Randy (can I call you that?)."  
**A**: Randyman is a cousin of my friend. Hehe. So, call me Rando.  
**Q** - dogbertcarroll: "More!"  
**A**: And I'm glad you asked. Yes, more you shall have.

More, indeed.  
Update will come as soon as possible, but I'll be making plenty of revisions to try to keep the epilogue as smooth as possible. A month, maybe? We'll see, evetually. I just have one important thing to ask everyone: would you want a hell of a lot of fighting when it comes to the angel? The full thing? Or do you want to have it short and not so long? Tell me before I go on to work on it. The full version, I'd estimate to be about 3,000 words or more.  
Words just can't describe a story. Only the story, itself can tell. That story is about to finish.  
A slapstick. A war story. A drama. A melo-drama. A detective. A mystery. A thriller. A suspense. A sci-fi. A fantasy. A romance. A horror. A tragedy. A biography. A chronicle. A trilogy. A bi... An Epic.  
Fulfillment is nigh.


	5. Epilogue

Have you ever wondered why Kaworu always seems to come up towards the _end_ of the story, and die just before it ends?  
Me too. 

Well, a major apology from me for not having updated all this time. It is now slightly over a month, instead of just the month that I thought I'd update by.  
It doesn't matter, now. This chapter now comes in conclusion for the story that you have just read. Don't expect it to be short, though. It's longer than all three parts put together, as promised.  
If you forgot what the story was about, here's a quick synopsis of what has happened last episode:

_Misato goes crazy and tries to blow up Gendou. Shinji saves Gendou but at the apparent cost of his own life. Misato gets even more psychotic after finding out Gendou survived, and it all eventually came to a showdown between Rei and Misato. Rei gets injured (bullet wounds that render her left arm useless and a slashed eye), but eventually brings Misato back into the sane realm with an influential speech. Shinji returns just in time for nothing, revealing that he was saved by Gendou's fanclub - who turned out not to be just that, but also mysterious beings from the _n_th dimension. By then, the week had ended, and they went out into the outside world again, only to find the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan (angel) has come, and with great farting powers. After a brief panic back into NERV, again, Gendou realizes something that can defeat the angel; demonstrated most clearly by Lilith. Apparently, she pulled out the Lance of Longinus during lunch break to stick a blob of herself onto it to cook it over a fire..._

Because this thing is so long, I have also provided 9 intermissions between appropriate scenes. You can rest, have a leak or recover the world of the unrandom (and unfunny) again if you believe you should have a pause. The intermissions also have names so you can remember them  
On the off-chance that you are a hardcore, read-in-one-sitting sort of person, I can happily refer you to NERV's psychiatric ward, or I can let you right on.

On a side note, I must say, I am appalled at how FanFictionis not letting me put a question mark and an exclamation mark together. I am sorry to say, I can't find a way around it, so all '! (and) ?' have to be simplified to '?'. I hope you can work it out.

So, without further ado...

* * *

**Epilogue**

They snatched the skewer off Lilith.

"Hey! I was gonna eat that!" Cried Lilith. "I want my marshmallow! And my Big M! Where's my weed?"  
"Dude, you look way too stoned for that," commented Shigeru, looking at her dull, heavy eyes. Shigeru, in the past, learnt what a really stoned person was like. Lilith looked like the perfect textbook case.  
"I blame it on Gendou for the fire of '04 in this very room with ten years' supply of weed storage," said Lilith, sternly. "Which, needless to say, I had to endure."  
"And it was an excellent quality, too," added Gendou, regrettingly. "I'll be restocking, soon, in accordance to the budget."  
"Yeah, what a crappy waste of money," commented Ritsuko.

"Oh," said Shinji with a sudden realization. "So does that explain why I get high every time I get stuck in the entry plug for too long?"  
It made perfect sense...  
"Who ever told you we used Lilith's blood for the LCL in the first place, Shinji?" asked Ritsuko, suspiciously.  
"Uh... I don't know. It's like I was made to say that by some Godlike force... A force making us say things because it sounds weird. Maybe we are all acting according to a will of some great story writer!" Exclaimed Shinji.  
"If we were, I'm sure this _God-writer_ thing wouldn't reveal itself so obviously, you know," said Misato. "And I'm sure this sort of thing has happened before in the other _stories_ with us in it."  
"Alternate universes?" asked Makoto.  
"Or, even more ludicrous, _fics_!" laughed Asuka. "You're all idiots."  
"I don't believe any God thing would waste their time writing all this crap, Shinji," said Lilith. "I mean, sure we all have out catchphrases like 'Where's my Big M?' and 'What a crappy waste of money' and stuff that could be from some children's show, but seriously, who would be writing all this bull?"  
"I don't know. Probably someone on crack as well," said Asuka. "But I'm getting sick of the 'What a crappy waste of money' thing. It's way overused."  
Suddenly, everyone stared at each other with slit eyes for a moment; like they were saying "Next one to say 'What a crappy waste of ...' is going to get pulverized."

"... Anyway," said Lilith. "What of my marshmallow?"  
"Lilith," said Gendou, impatiently, "by the time we've finished with the angel, we're gonna have a marshmallow as big as you."  
Lilith stroked her chin with a smile. "Hmmm... Interesting."  
"So we have a deal?" said Gendou, pushing up his glasses.  
"Deal," said Lilith, and pulled out her hand. When Gendou shook hands with this giant thing, Gendou screamed.  
"Argh! My hand!"  
Lilith smirked. "That's for all the years I've been donating blood without pay!"  
"But think of the budget!"  
"No hand for you!"  
"Gimme my right hand!"  
"Uh uh!"  
"Ugh! Ugh..."  
"You gotta jump higher than that to get your hand back!"

Misato shook her head, and began instructions. "Maya! Makoto! Get the Commander and Rei to get their hands fixed. Everyone else, carry off the Skewer! Let's go! Hup, hup, hup, hup, hup, hup..."

A minute later, Rei walked out into the Command Center with a full left arm, good as new.  
"**Whaaah!**" They all screamed, recoiling back at Rei's rather speedy recovery.  
"I got better," said Rei.  
"Well, that's good for you," said Ritsuko. "But you still can't pilot the Evangelion because of the eye damage. I guess we'll have to leave it to Shinji and Asuka. It looks real nice, though. A lot like UNIT-01, actually. That scar could get you a lot of boys... like my mole."  
"Yeah, look at you, now," commented Makoto.  
Rei looked at the two with Ritsuko glaring dangerously at Makoto with a popping vein. "I... guess I'll be going, now..."

As Rei walked off, Misato glanced a little to her left and eyed Toji with an evil smile. "Speaking of pilots... Toji...?"  
"Yeah...?" said Toji cautiously.  
Misato approached Toji like she was going to get him to pilot Unit-00 in place of Rei, which was exactly what she was going to do. "Don't forget to keep your end of the bargain, now..."  
"What bargain...?" Toji ran for his life.  
"Get him!" Misato shouted to two men in black suits and sunglasses, who quickly chased Toji for a few meters before tackling him to the ground. Misato smiled. "You'll be piloting Unit-00, now."  
"Take him away, boys!" said Ritsuko like she'd said it a million times.  
"Hey, that my line!" Shouted Misato at Ritsuko. She composed herself and looked towards the men. "Bake him away, toys!"

#_Discharge Termination Plug..._#  
#_Insert Entry Plug._#  
#_Begin Entry PLug LCL injection..._#  
As the voices continued, Shinji took a deep breathe of the LCL. "Hey," commented Shinji after a second, "this smells a lot like... baked beans. Um, does that make sense?"  
"Yeah," said Ritsuko's voice. "I also spent some money to improve the LCL atmosphere after the anonymous complaint that it smelt a lot like blood (whoever that was). I've developed three new flavors, actually..."  
"What a crappy waste of money..." commented Misato behind Ritsuko's back, forgetting that silent truce they had, staring at each other with slitted eyes.

Ritsuko's fist flew up and whacked Misato into the air, twirling round and round.

"Yes... we have baked bean, chocolate and Yebisu beer."  
"Why don't you get me the chocolate, then?" asked Shinji.  
"Because," said Ritsuko, "Unit-01 ate it all when she went berserk, last month. So, I guess, be careful when you synch up. Unit-01 may go on a sugar-high... If you know what I mean..."  
Ritsuko ended there, and Shinji heard the following: #_Connect to main power supply. Transmit pulse..._# #_Connect to A10 nerve._# before he got hit by an extreme high sugar level. Shinji spasmed for a split-second, then relaxed, slowly with a weird sensation. #_All circuits are operational._# "So, how is it, Shinji?" asked Ritsuko. She was staring at the image of a heavy-lidded cross-eyed Shinji attempting to speak in a slurred speech.  
"Oh... yeah. Whadedah..." said Shinji, slurrly.  
Misato stared at this screen with a face, and was disturbed by a scary, low giggle from Shinji. "O-o-oka-a-ay..." said Misato, cautiously. "First the weed high, now the sugar high... What will we think of next?" She then looked at Ritsuko, who shrugged in reply. "Okay, how's Asuka?"  
The screen switched to Unit-02's entry plug being filled with LCL.  
"Ah! Es ist... Hehehe..." Asuka's face then turned into a drunk smile.  
Misato glared at Ritsuko. "Don't tell me that's LCL Yebisu, Rits."  
"Well, technically, it isn't..." she said, hesitantly. "It's beer and OCT... mixed together..."  
Misato looked evilly at Ritsuko.  
"Well, I guess we were running out of funds, now that we spent some on improving the MAGI and the Dolby Digital Surround Sound® 17.4 Speaker/Microphone System... I had to improvise... By mixing beer and OCT... together..."  
"Which was a crappy waste of you-know-what."  
"But you got to admit, it was pretty cool..." Ritsuko leaned on a desk and sighed, distantly. _Yep... it was cool while it lasted. How on earth do we do this, now, without the MAGI?_

Meanwhile, Asuka was laughing as she began to swim wildly around the Entry Plug.  
It wasn't often that any of the children explored their Entry Plug like so. To them, it was just plain, old, same old. Of course, when you're drunk, common sense is kicked out the window, and interesting stuff happens.  
It is not often that you'd get drunk in an Entry Plug. It is not often that you swim in it. Not often when you take a look behind the seat. It is not often that you'd find a nice, round, big, friendly, green button with a stylistic, glowing "**X**" behind the seat.  
"So, what does this button do?"

Asuka pushed the button and the Help Screen materialized in front of her, in the beer.

Asuka's screen flashed in front of Shinji. "Hey, Shinji, look what I found!"  
Shinji could see a green help screen behind Asuka. "Yeah? How do i get it?"  
"Pretty cool eh? Just press the green X at the back of the seat."  
"Oh, I never noticed that thing..." _Press._ "Hey, cool! It's got all the controller buttons! Hey, it even says what all the buttons do! Let's see, L Trigger - Brake, yeah I got that... D Button - Honk. Hm, let's see..." Shinji pressed his XBox controller's D button and the Eva gave a loud car-honk noise that echoed throughout the holding cages.

"Ugh, deafening..." commented Fuyutsuki as he stuck his little finger in his right ear and gave it a cleaning.

"Whoa, I never knew that button did _that_! But wait. What's this?" He took a close look at a strange, faint symbol that could hardly be seen. However, it was clearly a button of some sort... A hidden button. Shinji ventured to push it.  
"Whoa! It's the cheat-codes! Muahahaha! I am **The God**! Now..."  
Shinji grinned as he screened through the list Konami cheat-codes. "Unlimited Eva Batteries. Just what I need...  
"Unlimited Ammo. Great!  
"Change Eva color... I've always wanted a White Eva. After all, white _is_ the new black!"

Shinji toggled through the colors. Outside, everyone stared at the Eva as it changed from purple to green, to blue, to pink, to grey, to white. The white blinded everyone. Everyone tried their best to shield their eyes.

"First the horn, now this," said Gendou, putting his hands in front of his face. "Ugh, I prefer the grey."  
"Actually, I like the pink one," commented Fuyutsuki, too holding up his hands.  
"That's because you're gay, Kouzou."  
"How dare you!" Cried Fuyutsuki. "I'm bi!"  
"Stop your quarreling, boys," said Misato, firmly.  
_Did she just call us 'boys'?_ thought Gendou, steaming.

The Eva then recalibrated its luminosity to an acceptable level.  
"Now, what else?" said Shinji as he scrolled down. "Unlimited lives. Er... I never knew you could die more than once. Oh well...  
"Decrease IQ... Hm... Nah...  
"Change Rei's panty color... Wait, I think I've accidentally stumbled upon that once, didn't I?  
"Automatic Matrix moves...? **Aha! Now, I _AM_ THE GOD!**"  
"Shinji, why don't you get us something else more important?" Asked Ritsuko.  
"Like what?"  
"**LIKE MAYBE A NEW SUPER-MAGI?**"  
"Oh yeah, sure."

Maya saw everything was ready on the new super MAGI and looked to Misato. "Major?"  
Misato paused, then shouted, "**EVA LAUNCH!**"

Fuyutsuki squeaked his ears with his little finger again. "I preferred the horn..."

"Weeeeeeeee!"  
Shinji shot up through the chute like a bullet from a shotgun. His enjoyment was further enhanced with his chocolate-induced sugar-high. Above him, below the buildings of Tokyo-3, the road opened up for its way. However...  
"Major! The Extruding End-Track is not functioning!" cried Maya. Not good.  
"That's impossible! That's never happened before!"  
"There's a first time for everything," said Gendou. "We can't stop it now..."  
The geoport was fully opened, and like a cork from a champagne bottle, the Evangelion shot out and up.  
"Uh... I don't think it will land very well," said Misato.

The Evangelion flew through the sky, reached its turning point and fell back to Earth with amazing speed. As it fell, Unit-01 spun anti-clockwise, sumersaulted twice, with pike and landed on both its feet with a crash, kneeling. Very dramatic. Very cool.  
"Yeah," said Shinji, smiling. "Automatic Matrix moves... Makes up for the slowing-down-time power I lost."  
The evangelion stood up, for a moment, then spasmed like electricity ripped through for a second. Shinji accompanied the shaking with blubber sounds: "Bleh bleh bleh!"  
"Unit-01 is highly unstable, Katsuragi. You understand that?" asked Ritsuko, taking a bite of chocolate.  
"Don't worry," Misato replied. "The more hyperactive, the better! (And I thought you said all the chocolate were gone!) Launch Unit-02!"

Unit-02 was launched with a drunk Asuka in it. The geoport opened promptly, and Unit-02 smashed its head on the bottom of a semi-trailer.

"Who the hell would leave a semi-trailer in the middle of the road?" Cried Misato with a sweatdrop.  
"Hey, that was fun," said Asuka, drunkedly. "Let's do it again!"  
Misato sighed heavily, again. "Withdraw Evangelion and switch to another route."

They did. The geoport opened promptly and Unit-02 smashed its head into Unit-01's groin.  
"**Eeek!#!**" Shinji's sugar-high smile ended quite suddenly. Unit-01 fell back with a big thud, and Unit-02 crawled out, drunkedly.  
"Hey, that was fun... Let's do it again!" said Asuka with a wide smile.  
"**No!**" Shinji quivered, curled on the floor, holding his groin.

Meanwhile, Misato talked into a microphone. "You ready, Toji? Launch Unit-00!"  
"**No!**" was what Toji wanted to say but no one heard.  
Bang! Unit-00 popped up next to Asuka. The final locks were released and the Eva's shoulders sagged forward to a slouch...  
Nothing happened.  
"C'mon, Toji, let's get goin'!" said Asuka, slapping Unit-00 on the back. It fell on its face. "Whoops! There you go now!" Asuka set Toji back on his feet.  
Toji rubbed his nose, painfully. "I can't move this thing! What should I do?"  
"Maybe we should have given him some training..." said Misato to Ritsuko, the back of her head, dark blue and with a sweatdrop. So much for a new pilot. Everyone turned their heads, slowly, to Gendou with an glaring, fake smile smile on.  
"... What?" cried Gendou, whiningly. "You want me to switch to Dummy Plug or something?"  
Everyone nodded their heads, slowly, seriously.  
"Fine then... But I've warned you."

**Intermission 1 - You're late**

Toji was put out of his misery.  
Toji's Entry Plug went all red, then a green color. In the corner, a light flashed, slowly, ominously, saying "Dummy Plug: Custom Pilot."  
The whining of the dummy plug starting up increased slowly like a foreboding of something very bad about to be unleashed.

Unit-00's eye flashed. It has become self-aware. It threw its head back and roared. It finished, then ran about, around the city, until it came to a flower shop. With horrific easiness, it ripped off the roof like a lid from a tin can.  
"Argh!" Cried Shinji. "It's gonna kill everyone!  
The Evangelion dug its hand into the shop and pulled out a bunch of flowers. It stood up, and began skipping around like a little girl, and threw flowers around. It was a horrible sight.  
"What the hell? Queer Eye for the Eva Guy?" said Shinji, recoiling.  
Meanwhile, Toji was screaming his head off. It was the most evil thing that has happened in his life. He was acting gay. His screams were never ceasing, never tiring. Building up like an endless flow of a waterfall. "**Huargh! Make it stop! Make it stop! Oh, God!**"

Then, the Eva stopped right next to Unit-01 and broke off its petty mouth-restraint, and began talking. The voice... was undescribable.  
"Now, what should we do about this white? It's _so-o-o_ not this year's back. Let me help you with that..." And it tried to take it off.

Shinji was screaming as much as Toji, now, but of pure terror. "**Huargh! Make it stop!**" But Unit-00 had already brought Unit-01 down. With a gleam of the eye, Unit-00 began ripping Unit-01's armour apart. Pieces of white flew everywhere. It never seemed to cease. Not for Shinji, nor for the NERV staff at Command Center. They all stared with horror as the evil process continued on, hidden from the view of the camera, silhouettes of pieces flying away. All stared at it with shock. Except for Makoto, who was putting his hands on his face and crying with pity and a nausiating stomach.  
Everyone was, then, looking at Gendou, after seeing the evil work of the Dummy Plug first-hand. They were in shock and awe. Gendou stood there, with a smirk/smile on his face and a sweatdrop... He sat back down, slowly. Everyone could but look back on the Evangelion, now dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and pants.

Fuyutsuki leant towards Gendou's ear and said, "... What the hell is this?"  
"SEELE sent us this guy called Kaworu. They say he was the Fifth Child. Dr. Akagi said he was compatible with the Dummy Plug Interface, so I thought 'What the heck!'"  
"You didn't want your son to know about this new kid, right?"  
Gendou gave a significant pause. "... He was gay."  
Kouzou looked back at the screens, still leaning towards Gendou. "Obviously, you kept him in the same tank as the Rei's seeing as how there's little chance he would... contaminate them. Am I correct?"  
"Saves money."  
"No sweat."

Meanwhile, it seemed that Shinji finally gave up trying to stop Unit-00 from dressing him in a black turtle-neck sweater and pants. It actually didn't look all that bad.  
As everyone clapped at Unit-01 being pushed down the cat-walk, something evil happened. A big gust of... blew the Evas off their feet, all of a sudden, and sent them into a building.  
"Eeew!" everyone shouted, holding their noses. "Make it stop!"  
Kouzou stood up. "It wasn't me!"  
"No it isn't," said Ritsuko, dramatically. "It's the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan!"  
Gendou, on the other side of the room at his desk, stood up with his arms on the table shouting, "**Nooooooooo!**"  
This time, there was a reasonable excuse to be this dramatic in shouting "Nooooooooo!" like so. The angel has arrived. And they were busy learning about this year's new black.

Shinji, lying in the rubble, looked about. "Where is it, Misato?" But, already, he saw it. Standing here, just a couple of blocks away. Shinji stood up, quickly. The two giant beings stood there, now. One fat and white. The other, lean and black. They both knew the fight was on.

Suddenly, a white box popped out of the ground right next to Shinji, and opened up to reveal the Lance of Longinus. #_Take it, Shinji!_# Said Misato's voice, and Shinji did. He grabbed it and ran down the road, raising the spear up like a javelin.  
As Shinji ran down, he thought he wouldn't lose. The angel was too fat to run from this, and it can never escape the Lance of Longinus: the Skewer of all skewers when it comes to marshmallows. He won a medal at school in the field of javelin. As well as this, Shinji had Automatic Matrix Moves!  
_There's no way I can lose!_ Thought Shinji. "EAT THIS, ARSCHLOCH!"  
Shinji is now an easy 50 meters away from the angel. As Shinji was about to release the Lance into the angel (destroying it just like that so everyone could live happily ever after), the external power supply cable went _Tawng!_ and jerked Shinji back. Unit-01 fell backwards, comically, and dropped the Lance.

"Oooooowww..." said everyone at NERV, sympathizingly.  
Unit-00 closed its eye like it was expecting that. "I knew that cable was a fashion reject."  
"And a crappy waste of money," said Ritsuko to Gendou, glaringly.  
"... **SHUT UP ABOUT THE WASTE OF MONEY!**"

None-the-less, Shinji wasn't going to give up that easily. He got on to his knees, grabbed the Lance, undid his cable, and charged once more at the angel. This time, he saw the projectile fly at the angel, successfully. What happened, now, was that it bounced off the angel and clanged to the ground.  
"Oh, shit!" cried Shinji as he realized that he grabbed his school flag pole instead of the Lance. His momentum carried him right into the angel; the Eva collided with the marshmallow man and was inexplicably absorbed like that.

Misato's face went from here to here. It turned into a contorted image of pure shock and horror. "That thing's absorbed the Eva?"  
Misato turned to Ritsuko. Ritsuko ripped off the printout from the new MAGI. She looked at it for a second then announced, "The MAGI has just calculated what happened. Shinji and the Eva was absorbed and their AT-Fields were neutralized! All substances have scattered into a gaseous plasma form!"  
"So you mean Shinji has turned into air?"  
Ritsuko paused for a second, looking around. "... You don't want to know..."  
Just then, the giant marshmallow man farted.  
"Nooo!"  
"Shinji's soul," continued Ritsuko, "is still intact, and is currently floating around in a vague location and state, and is likely to return to his body if it is to be recreated."  
"Wow," said Makoto. "The MAGI can analyze that quickly?"  
"Anyway, how do we get Shinji back?" Asked Misato.  
"... Says, here, that we need to drop 92 N2 mines into the angel."  
"..." said Maya. "Ritsuko, you made that up, didn't you?"  
Realizing she was caught, this time, Ritsuko looked at Maya with a sweatdrop, then shamefully at the floor. "... yeah."  
"Ha!" said Misato. "So, you really are a pyromaniac! Sure, I am a bit, but that explains who set fire to the girl's locker room last month! With me in it!"  
"... It's just that you had more fuel than me, and I was jealous."  
"Ah!" shouted Gendou. "So it was _you_ who set fire to my collection of antique Vandread manga of '01! Meia was a role-model! Both for me _and_ my Rei desi..."  
At that point, everyone stared at Gendou.  
"... Okay, you didn't hear anything about Rei in that. Anyway, I was going to hand them down to Shinji."  
Ritsuko shook her head. "No, I wasn't a pyromaniac, then. I only began my obsession with fire when I witnessed Misato cooking with Vodka" said Ritsuko, puzzled. "I never set your manga on fire."

Meanwhile, in a dark corner, Kaji was listening to all this. He thought it thoroughly in his mind like some great detective. Sherlock Holmes, even.  
"So," he said to himself, "Gendou's manga was never burnt by Ritsuko. I will deduct, then, that it can only be Yui, his then-wife, that burnt his collection to prevent Gendou from become what he has, now, and to prevent their child, Shinji, from becoming like Hibiki. I also deduct that Yui gave him Bubblegum Crisis manga to Shinji, secretly, which, no doubt, made him what he is, today: the new Mackie (- he even sounds like him in the English dub!). Anyway, Gendou had his intelligence agency report to him, at roughly 2003, on who it was: Yui. And thus, Gendou had his comeback in 2004, absorbing Yui into Unit-01, and replacing her with a Meia-inspired Rei Ayanami, whilst taking up all the ruthlessness and coldness of Meia, thus forgetting his wife, ultimately...  
"How ironic..."  
On the side, Fuyutsuki mentioned, quietly, "Actually, Yui was with me on a New Zealand expedition at the time of the burning: She couldn't have burnt his manga..."  
It was then that Kaji became more tense.  
"So, the plot thickens," he said, hoarsely, quietly. His eyes slitted. "Who burnt Gendou's manga?"

"So what do we have to do to get Shinji back?" Asked Misato.  
Ritsuko sighed again. "We need to release an AT-Field, attract the plasma particles, rearrange them through a separate AT-Field manipulator (being careful not to to interfere with the original holding AT-Field), and bind it together with a sharp jolt of electricity and a pint."  
"Of what?"  
"Scotch."  
"Wait, scotch doesn't come in pints..."  
As Misato and Ritsuko discuss the ways in which scotch is presented, Professor Fuyutsuki looked around him, warily, and hid a bottle behind his back.  
"Where the hell are we going to get scotch?" Asked Misato.  
"More importantly, where are we going to get the AT-Field?"  
Now, everyone became silent.  
"No, seriously, where do we get scotch?"

Gendou stood up. "I think I've got just the AT-Field you need," he announced, then said to Fuyutsuki, quietly, "Get Kaworu."  
"Can we use him?" Said Fuyutsuki, amazed.  
"He's disposable."  
"Wait a second!" Shouted Ritsuko. "As much as we need an AT-Field, why would you sacrifice a kid's life for one? Kaworu will lose his form! He will die! Disintegrate! There isn't even enough AT-Field to replace that of both Shinji _and_ the Evangelion."  
"He is gay," said Gendou, dominantly. "And he is an angel. (Don't ask me how I know that, I just know.) There's enough AT-Field for everyone! _And_, I also believe we've got enough scotch for everyone! Fuyutsuki?"

Kouzou went berserk. "Nooo! You will not take my scotch away from me!"  
Fuyutsuki made to escape.  
Misato knew that the fate of mankind rested in Fuyutsuki's hands: the bottle of scotch. "Someone! Do something!"  
Just then, a boy ran out of nowhere. He was pale, albino, actually, but had a silver tint in his hair. He was running from two men in black suits, stark naked, (him, not the men in black suits - duh) and dripping with LCL. If this had been on TV, it would be fanservice for the ladies. Indeed, Ritsuko's coffee mug would have served to block those certain parts of Kaworu as he ran.  
He was looking back over his shoulder as he ran awkwardly, and bumped into Kouzou!

The bottle flipped into the air as Kouzou fell. The bottle flipped over to the next level where Ibuki, Makoto and Misato was on.  
"Nooo...!" Cried Misato, staring at the bottle of scotch. The bottle was going to hit the floor just a five meters away unless Katsuragi could help it.

She did. She leaped dramatically sideways, into the air. Her arms outstretched, her eyes wide.  
Like a soccer ball, Misato caught the bottle, tucked safely in her arms as she rolled to the side. She got up, victoriously, and yelled. And, like a rugby ball,threw it to the ground, where it promptly broke to a million pieces.

Ritsuko shouted, "You asshole! Now we've got no more scotch! No scotch, no Shinji. You screwed the scotch, Misato. While the other two, up there attempt to keep the angel distracted, Shinji needs to be brought back to save us all. And where's that bloody Fifth Child? We need to extract that AT-Field!"  
"Then, firstly," said Makoto, "where do we get more scotch?"  
Gendou spoke again. "Don't fret, people. I just so happen to have a secret stash of scotch," he said, bending down, under the desk. "Scotch, whiskey... and apple cider."  
"Right," said Makoto, watching Gendou pull out two bottles of it from under his desk. "Then what of that AT-Field?"  
"Learn from a master," said Ritsuko. "The MAGI says we need to fight fire with fire, in this situation."  
"(Who's the master? You or the MAGI?)" Said Makoto, aside. "And, what? The MAGI's got proverbs as well?"  
"Yes, but that was an analogy," said Ritsuko, arrogantly. "What it means is that to get an _Absolute Terror Field_, we need to terrify it more."  
"Oh, I get it. Make him jump out of his skin."  
"Yes," said Misato, objectively, "but what if that fails, Ritsuko?"  
Ritsuko smiled, darkly, at this. "Don't worry," she said, evilly. "I've got my stuff ready... Hope you've got yours," she said, looking back behind her. Her eyes slitted, and a torch lit her face from underneath.  
Something big is going to happen to Kaworu, be it to be scared to death or something else...

**Intermission 2 - Darthly Death**

There was an ordinary corridor. Eerily empty. A harsh, dull cleanliness. Cold as a cave. Lifeless as a stone. It stretched to unknown domains like the bowels of a monster. The walls seemed to close in with terrifying stillness. A strange, ambiguous world, where existence seemed to cease. No one belonged here. No one knows.  
Along these corridors, Kaworu walked down, unsure. He was lost. He didn't care.  
"Damn it's cold," he said, hugging his naked body. "I may be naked, but it's still cold..." Kaworu swallowed, briefly, but his mouth was dry. He groaned. "Can't they turn on the heaters or something?"  
And just then, a distant, breathy noise started.  
"Wow, the heaters are supposed to turn on like that? This place is scaring me..."  
But the hoarse flow of air was not continuous. It was a deep, muffled breathing. The slow inhaling and exhaling was hoarse and chilling. The room was no more warmer.

Kaworu could but turn around to where he heard that noise. There, in superb slow-motion, something made its dramatic entrance.  
It was a dark, big figure. A man suited in a black, other-worldy armour. His face hidden in a black helmet like a mask. It was... Darth Vader.  
"Nagisa Kaworu..." it said, walking every so steadily towards Kaworu. "It is time."  
Kaworu's eyes were wide. His breathing, tense and difficult. He struggled to get his words, "Are you here to kill me?"  
There was a long, unholy pause as the figure stopped before Kaworu.  
"... Yes."  
Kaworu came to to senses and took one step back. "Not without a fight!"  
He sprung back to a case on the wall, broke the glass and pulled out his weapon. Like a light saber, he held up a baseball bat slowly across his face. On the baseball bat, the inscriptions flowed, "Champions of '96". Kaworu looked up, determined at Darth Vader.  
"Come, Nagisa," returned Darth. "Look upon thy doom:"  
And he held up his light saber. A darthly purple glow illuminated his zone. And immediately, the entire pole of light flopped down to the ground like a jacket sleeve. Darth looked at it, disgusted. "Damn Ritsuko. Still hasn't fixed this angel tentacle..."  
Darth casted away the tentacle and took out his even more deadlier weapon from behind his back: his kendo stick.  
Kaworu held out his baseball bat even more stiller across his face. His eyes dangerously slitted. The moment of great silence came... and went away.

"**Allez Cuisine!**" Darth shouted, and jumped into the air, holding his stick high at Kaworu, with lightning speed!  
The stick whacked the floor with shocking loudness as Kaworu rolled to the side. He immediately tried to take a shot at Darth's back. Darth twisted around, and blocked the bat. Darth jumped into the air, again.  
Kaworu was still on the floor as he had to block another hit from the kendo, from Darth, right above him!

Now, the sticks were held up against each other. Pushing against one another in a still, silent struggle. The strain between Kaworu and Darth Vader existed for this moment. Kaworu was on the floor, pushing up at Darth Vader, who looked down at him. Kaworu looked with rage in his eyes. So close, they were, they could reach out one another, but the force separated them.

At last, Kaworu managed to push the kendou stick aside, momentarily, and he backflipped several paces back. Just as quickly, Kaworu charged back at Darth Vader, screaming in terrifying rage.  
Each vicious hit, attempted by Kaworu; each of them blocked with equal, cold agility. Kaworu grunted at each, strike. Pushing Darth slowly down the corridor. Echoes of his frustration lingered. Echoes of his relentlessness.

With a final, almighty move, Darth flung Kaworu's final strike away, and took a brutal hit at Kaworu's neck.  
Kaworu shouted in pain, falling to the floor. He grasped his neck, but used his remaining strength in looking into Darth Vader's eyes.

"Impressive..." Darth said, relaxing his kendo stick to the ground. "Most impressive... SEELE has taught you well. You have controlled your fear... Now release your _terror_."  
Kaworu tilted his head, cocking an eyebrow and asked, "Eh?"  
Darth continued on. "Only your AT-Field can destroy me."  
Kaworu recovered his strength with a surge of enlightenment. He smiled with cunningness, and jumped up, whacking Darth Vader in the stomach.  
Darth blocked this, easily, but, with an explosion of an orange hexagonal force, Darth was blown backwards through a door. That orange hexagonal force was the AT-Field.

The door led into a dark, unlit room. Nothing could be seen inside. Nothing came out except for an ominous, dark smell. Looking into it, Kaworu said only this: "I do not fear Darth..."  
And with this, he disappeared into the darkness of the room, carrying his baseball bat with him.

"Hey, Shinji disappeared!" Mused Asuka, as she finally found out Shinji had disappeared. "I can do that too! Watch!"  
Asuka ran towards the angel, drunkedly.  
"**No!**" Shouted everyone at NERV.  
Ritsuko simply pressed a button. An Eva-launch case shot out from the ground in front of Asuka and Unit-02 smashed right into it, leaving an Eva-shaped dent on the other side.  
"Have I disappeared, yet...?" Came the muffled voice.

Kaworu's footsteps rang through this hall. Or perhaps it was an isle. Kaworu couldn't be sure. The lights weren't on. Kaworu held his baseball bat blindly in front of him, his only way of knowing when not to hit a wall. His naked body felt the piercing foulness of the air. Cold, unforgiving. Obviously, the air was insulted by the boy.

Bang! The lights flew open like a baseball stadium at night.  
There, just seven meters in front of Kaworu in the narrow isle, was Darth Vader. It looked at Kaworu, sternly, yet not threateningly.  
Yet, Kaworu could but look around at his surroundings, amazed. The long isle was lined with glass cabinets. Each filled with trophies and awards of all sorts. Kaworu, having forgetten his place, quickly stared back at Darth Vader, who hadn't moved.  
"Go ahead," he said, invitingly. "Won't you take a look at some of the awards we've got?"  
Kaworu looked, slowly, back around him in abstained awe. He began to walk down the isle, looking into the glass cabinets, slowly, reading some.

Kaworu reflected. Back at SEELE, he never got any award of any kind. It was a tradition for the organizations to hold competitions against each other, often. The competitions were mainly about who can do the best at whatever. Because of the vast range of categories one can enter at any one time, it was not unusual for every member of each organization to have at least two awards each.

Kaworu continued on, reading many of the awards that captured his attention.  
"Best Scientist Award (2006) - Akagi Ritsuko" "Best Bagpipe Reptoire (2003) - Fuyutsuki Kouzou" "Best Halloween Costume (2015) - Ikari Shinji" "Best Rapper (1996) - Ikari Yui" "Longest Time Spent with Both Feet in a Bucket of Water (2009) - Fuyutsuki Kouzou (for 73 hrs, 19 mins)" "Best Nude (2014) - Ibuki Maya" "Most Keys (2015) - Asakawa Ryo (at 144)" "Most Encyclopaedias Balanced on One Person's Head for Ten Seconds (2015) - Kaji Ryouji (at 17 and a half)" "Baseball Champions (1996) - Aida Haku, Fuyutsuki Kouzou, Hyuga Makoto, Ikari Gendou, Kaji Ryouji, Suzuki Koji" "Cutest Pet (2015) - Penpen (of Katsuragi Misato)" "Best Comedy Act (2014) - Hyuga Makoto" "Best Darth Vader Impersonation (2010) - Ikari Gendou" "Best Fanfi"  
"What the...?" Kaworu gasped, amazed.  
_Best Darth Vader Impersonation?_

Darth Vader's head tilted down a bit, now a look of intimidation. "So, Kaworu, you have finally found the truth."  
Kaworu looked in shock, disbelieving. His eyes stared at Darth, who threw his head back and laughed evilly.

And in this laughter, he pulled out a remote control and pressed a button.  
Just then, a trophy flew out, smashing the glass that housed it, right at Kaworu. Kaworu reacted by flinging it away with his baseball bat.  
Darth began pressing more buttons. More trophies were ejected out of their shells. Kaworu could only bat away a third of these trophies. And there were not only just trophies: Sculptures, Oscars, Statue of David, and deer-heads with antlers, too. The awards that Kaworu couldn't hit, he tried to deflect it away with the force... AT-Field. But with this endless round of trophies, things got messy, and Kaworu was left battered, bloody and bruised.

All of a sudden, an entire trophy cabinet flew at Kaworu. With a large effort, Kaworu successfully reflected this cabinet away. But the cabinet smashed into an air-conditioner.  
The air-conditioner switched on.

All of a sudden, the entire room was wildly windy and cold. Darth stood in the middle of the room, still with what seemed like a great, heavy omnipresence.  
Trophies and pieces of glass flew around the room, dangerously about.  
Kaworu was curled into a ball, trying to avoid the flying objects and the whole freezing-temperature business, all without a shirt on. Though no one knew it, Kaworu was experiencing his own round of Elements. Today, he was experiencing wind - his last day.  
The wind became so powerful, Kaworu was lifted off the ground and was gone with it. Down the hall, he was sucked down like water in a bathtub, doomed to enter the dark domains of fate.

Kaworu flew out, onto a gantry platform. He was about to go over a railing, but managed to grab the railing with one hand. His baseball bat disappeared.

"Okay, I've definitely seen this before," said Kaworu in a flashing state of Déja Vu.  
Next thing he knew, Darth Vader was above him, his cape flapping in the wind and the debris. He took out its kendo stick and whacked Kaworu's wrist.  
Kaworu held on, still.  
"Cold. Freezing cold..." he said with a jerky voice. "God, if you're going to kill me, let me have some clothes on!"  
Darth looked down on Kaworu, authoritatively. "You came out in you birthday suit, now you go _back_ with your birthday suit!" Darth tilted his head, slightly. "Join me, and I will give you a pair of socks! Made of wool. Very warm... Very tempting..."  
Kaworu had to pause before he replied, "That would be nice, but **I'LL NEVER JOIN YOU!**"  
Darth Vader shrugged. "Fine, more socks for Gendou."  
"You killed my father!" Continued Kaworu.  
"Don't be silly, he's just a character called Darth from Star Wars, written by George Lucas. You've been watching too much."  
"Not him," shouted Kaworu, "YOU killed my father!"

"No, Kaworu. I... AM... YOUR FATHER!"

Kaworu's eyes looked disbelieving with shock at the dark figure. It welled with emotions, inexplicable but strong.  
"No!" he cried, helpless. "No! - Maybe, but - **NOOO!**"  
"Search your feelings... You know it to be true!"  
Kaworu's voice became a building hysteria. "SEELE never told me... SEELE never knew!"  
"That matters not. Do you choose to join us, and give us the AT-Field to resurrect a cute bishounen and an Eva, Kaworu? Or shall I whack this hand with my kendo stick until you fall?"  
Kaworu had to pause before he replied. Now, his voice now ever so sure. "Goodbye, father..."  
Leaving the dark figure - his father - with only this, he fell down.

Darth looked down below him, nothing but darkness below. There was no sign of Kaworu. "Goodbye, son," he said, slowly. "You were a good son to me... but you turned gay."  
With a chuckle, he pulled off his mask like something out of Charlie's Angels. "Sucker!"  
Gendou's eye gleamed as he looked down, smirkingly, below.

Just then, Kaworu's face flew up right in front of Gendou's.  
"Who's the sucker, now?" Said Kaworu in Gendou's face. "Ha ha! And did you seriously think I was gay? It was an act! Muahahahaha!"  
Gendou gasped. "Did you do anything with my Reis?"  
"I don't date younger women."  
Gendou smirked, raised his kendo stick and whacked Kaworu on the head.  
Kaworu lost a great deal of consciousness. "Oiii..." he said as he slipped down. However, his hand managed to cling onto something before he was about to plummet...  
_The Broth_.

With a sizzling sound, Kaworu screamed. "ARGH! IT BURNS! IT BURNS!"  
Gendou looked back down with a raised eyebrow. "Who are you gonna call?"  
The lights switched on, revealing the Command Center below Kaworu, where everyone shouted in reply, "Ri-tsu-ko!"  
There was a familiar ring to those lines as in busted Ritsuko, kicking the door down, wearing very weird gear and hold some very weird gun-like thing. It was a cross between a pest-removalist and a mad scientist. You could even say it could be from Ghost Busters...

Ritsuko fired her gun-like thing, and red and blue electrical-like waves shot out with bright flashes. It hit Kaworu, and seemed to draw him towards her. It sucked Kaworu's hand clean off _The Broth_.  
Kaworu tried desperately to fly away, but the gun-like thing was stronger. Kaworu's arms were flinging around in a swimming freestyle motion. Yet, Ritsuko still pulled Kaworu closer and closer to the floor.

Then, Ritsuko dropped a little black box on the floor as Kaworu was half-way down, and kicked directly it underneath Kaworu, who sunk closer and closer to the ground. The box had a chord and a pedal attached to it.  
"Maya!" Shouted Ritsuko, concentrating on Kaworu. "Step on the pedal!"  
Maya was right next to the pedal, but she was busy staring at the flailing angel. She said to herself, "That has _got_ to be the most life-like human disguise by an angel I have ever seen. I mean, look at the detail!" Maya pointed to Kaworu's thing Japanese-style - palm out, fingers straight.  
"Can I touch it?" She asked, reaching out, slowly, with a finger.  
"Maya!" screamed Ritsuko. "Step on the bloody pedal!" The gun-like thing was working full blast.  
Kaworu was slowly sinking, just in front of Maya, who was writing something on a piece of paper. He hasn't yet noticed her. She then held it up to Kaworu. "Here," she said, blushing. "If ever you're near a phone in heaven, call me." She winked.

Noticing someone's interest in him, Kaworu completely changed his position to laying on his side with his head on his hand, quickly and casually. "Hey, baby, what's up?"

Kouzou came up to Kaworu and smashed an empty bottle of scotch on his head.  
"Don't you _ever_ steal my lines!" He said, fuming.  
"Oiii..." Kaworu said as he began slipping, again. He slowly began to spin in the air, half-unconscious. Kouzou stepped on the pedal.  
The black box opened up, and shined a bright, white light up on Kaworu.  
In his last, desperate attempt, Kaworu clung onto Maya's piece of paper. His face was of desperation. "Mummy!" He squeaked.  
Maya giggled, letting go of the paper to turn to the side, putting the back of her hand against her mouth, blushing.  
Kaworu had begun his end. A blue, ghost-like image of Kaworu separated from Kaworu's body, slowly falling towards the light. His mind thought his last thought as he stared into the light... Heaven's gate has opened for him. "I think I've seen this before..."  
_Zzzchupp!_  
The box closed. The light disappeared.  
The body of Kaworu exploded in a scatter of yellow-brown particles like big grains of sand in a sand storm, disintegrating to nothing.

_The blue, ghost-like image of Kaworu comes from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within; and the yellow-brown particles comes from The Medallion (starring Jackie Chan). Anyone who hasn't watched either won't get the in-joke._

**Intermission 3 - Rebirth**

Above on the streets of Tokyo-3, Unit-00 stood. Still as a statue, depressing and silent. Unactivated... Silent.  
Unit-02 ran past it, drunkedly, being chased around by the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan.  
Asuka could but say, drunkedly, "I'm too old for these games."  
Inside of Unit-00, Toji sat, there, crawled up and shivering. "It's cold... I don't wanna die..." Just then, he realized something very awful. "Oh my God! This place smells like blood! THIS PLACE SMELLS LIKE BLOOD! GET ME OUTTA HERE!"  
Suddenly, he farted. "**OH, MY GOD! THIS PLACE SMELLS WORSE! HUARGH!**"

Just then, a picture of Misato popped up on his screen. "You're NOT gonna die, Suzuhara. Hang in there."  
Toji, however, saw, behind Misato, an image of a mad scientist zapping a naked boy with a ray-gun, who then exploded into a puff of particles. This did not comfort Toji.  
The screen switched off, leaving Toji with a new sense of paranoia.

Just a minute later, the Entry Plug hatch swung open with a chillingly loud creek. Light streamed in, and a figure with shining glasses popped up in front of the light.  
Toji screamed. "**Argh! She's coming to get me!**"  
"Why, hello, Suzuhara," said Kensuke.  
Toji realized it was him. "God, Kensuke, you frightened me!" He said. Then, with a complete change of voice, he added, "Not that I will admit that, anyway."  
Kensuke jumped in, none-the-less, and crawled over Toji, who mumbled in protest. "Don't tell anyone..."  
Kensuke ripped off Toji's A10 Nodes and placed it on his own head. He jumped into the pilot seat, excitedly. "Look at me! Look at me! I'm an Eva pilot! Weee!"

The Evangelion activated. Kensuke was thrilled. He was like a kid in a candy store. He jumped up and down, excitedly, which the Eva also strangely did.  
Ritsuko's voice now popped up. "Kensuke! You can pilot the Eva? Wow..."  
Gendou smiled. "He's a natural," he commented. "Toji, give him the plug suit!"  
Hearing this, Kensuke turned excitedly to Toji like a puppy dog.  
"What? No! Never!" Cried Toji, making excuses. "It's cold! I'll be naked! That mad scientist bitch'll blast me! Argh!"  
"Give me the plug suit!" Cried Kensuke, pulling at Toji's finger tips. As he grappled at Toji's hand, he accidentally pressed the release button on Toji's cuff, which did just that: Toji's suit was pulled clean off his body like a tissue in a vacuum cleaner.  
Toji, shocked, threw himself back, trying to cover himself. He screamed. "**DON'T LOOK AT ME, KENSUKE! DON'T LOOK AT ME! ARGH!**"

Kensuke's reaction was subtly extreme. He was momentarily dazed, holding the plug suit, falling backwards, slowly. "Wow..." he said, entranced at a particular part of Toji's male anatomy. "Talk about short..."  
Kensuke fell back on to a green button.  
The words, "Eject" popped up, on screen.  
Toji was blasted out of the entry plug.

Like an air-rocket, Toji was blasted through the sky under uncomfortable circumstances. Toji started falling down... down... down... until...  
_Splat._ Toji landed on a glass plane that was concealing NERV's 24th camera.

Every, single one at NERV could see the horrible, naked body of Toji flat on the screen! It was evil! Every, single one at NERV reeled back in repulse as the evil image of Toji's front-side was displayed perfectly at 1024 dpi on that MAGI screen!  
They all tried to shield their eyes against this dangerous sight, crying and screaming helplessly. The sight could blind a man for years. Maya put her hand on her mouth, making gagging noises.  
"Argh! Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!" Screamed Kouzou, as if dying a slow, torturous death.  
Ritsuko was furiously punching at the buttons on her control panel. A button finally did something: it turned on the wind screen wipers. It initiated wiping away Toji's body, that laid there.

But he remained on the screen, and... **JUST MADE MATTERS WORSE!**  
"Oh, the humanity!" Screamed Makoto, running around, covering his eyes. "The motion! The _jiggle_!"

Indeed. Awful, slapping noise could also be heard as Toji was brutally smacked by the wipers. The Dolby Digital Surround Sound® made it that much worse.  
All of a sudden, Ritsuko accidentally punched another button...  
The screen flashed for a second.  
The words "Replay" was displayed in the corner.  
The MAGI, with all its AI capabilities, replayed the recording with menacing intelligence. Playing at the perfect speed, resampling, enhancing, recalibrating and sample-synthesizing the treacherous video with ungodly precision...  
**IT WAS ZOOMING AND PLAYING IN SLOW-MOTION!**

"**NOOOOOOOOO...!**" Everyone screamed at once.

Finally, Ritsuko found the button.  
The roller-shutters started rising over the screen, slowly, pushing the body up as it slid to black the view.  
Everyone sighed in relief.

With shocking sudden-ity, a piercing beep sounded, and the words, in orange, displayed, "Shutters jammed".  
With that, everyone could see that tiny, awful shape being pressed between the shutters and glass from the shutters, ajar.

Everyone screamed like hell.  
Ritsuko tried her best to get rid of this evil sight.  
"This is the _worse_ way one could get circumcised!"  
The shutters opened, and tried to shut itself again. It's still stuck... The shutters tried again: Open, shut, open, shut. The noise of the jamming thing was horrendous. The shutters bashed the hell out of it in an attempt to get rid of a tiny, unholy sight.  
But at last, it disappeared, and the shutters locked with the most satisfying of _Shump_s in the history of roller-shutters _shump_ing.  
Now, there is darkness and a silence.  
Now, was there the sound of the absolute sigh of relief.

Ritsuko sighed, too, and fell back in exhaustion. She casually flicked back to the camera in Unit-00.

Kensuke got some orders from the major.  
"Kensuke, here's your first mission," said Misato. "Can you do it?"  
"Yes ma'am!" said Kensuke. "What is it?"  
Without a word, an equipment's launch case popped up next to Kensuke and opened... The equipment looked like a giant butterfly net.  
"Yeah! We can catch some butterflies!" He squealed. "My alternate hobby!"  
And he went around, randomly swinging the net everywhere.

Ritsuko looked dubiously at Misato. Misato shrugged.  
"Hey, at least he's collecting Shinji's particles as planned."  
Five minutes later, Kensuke was ordered to stop jumping around.  
"Okay, Kensuke," said Misato. "I think you've collected all of ShinI mean, all the _butterflies_ that we need. Bring it back to us."  
"Okay... What are you gonna do with them?" Asked Kensuke.  
"..." She said. "We're gonna make one, _big_... butterfly... which will save the world!" Misato felt like she was talking to a three year old.  
"Okay."  
Kensuke tossed the net into the box, which shut closed and fell back in the ground.

Back, down in the deep depths of NERV, Ritsuko stood in a large room, looking up. It was the newly constructed AFTPOS (AT-Field Particle Suspender).  
Makoto, too, was staring up at the immense machine. Both their eyes could not move from its awe. "Wow..." said Makoto. "That MAGI actually invented and built this machine in HOW LONG?"  
"Exactly three minutes, twenty-three seconds point one," said Maya, also having her head tilt upwards, staring at the AFTPOS.  
All three of them were staring up at the thing.

"Exactly," inserted Ritsuko. "It's also been revised twenty-three times, rebuilt fifteen times and adjusted four thousand and sixty-six times. It's also been patented at the Toukyou Tokkyo Kyoka Kyoku (Tokyo Patents Licensing Office)." Ritsuko's head didn't move from the AFTPOS.  
"I see..." said Maya, in awe, still looking upwards.  
"But what does the O in AFTPOS stand for?" Asked Makoto, looking upwards.  
"No reason," said Ritsuko, simply. She smiled, not that anyone would see it - they were all busy looking up at this machine. "It just sounds snazzy. It's pronounceable that way."

Gendou interrupted, looking up, too. "Can we start?"  
Ritsuko paused, staring intently at the AFTPOS, determined not to tear her eyes from this machine after all this time, and pressed a few keys on her laptop without looking down.

A small hatch on the ceiling of the giant contraption opened up.  
The contraption, itself, was big. Very big. It's bigger than an Evangelion. It looked much like a yellow-glassed box with four metallic poles in the corners, much like a giant shower cubicle. On the top, there was, apparently, a big slab of metal, five meters in width, alone, which sealed it off. There were many lights placed all on that slab, but the only thing that meant anything to anyone other than Ritsuko was a big status bar with scrolling, red words, lit up with LEDs.  
The particles fell from the hatch like little stars, like falling smoke, into the yellow box. The status bar read the following: "Initializing... Analyzing assembly structure... Charging AT-Field... At-Field Initialized..."  
All of a sudden, the particles that floated in the yellow container seemed organize themselves, and soon rearranged themselves into a translucent figure of an Evangelion. In the bottom, next to the Evangelion, far in the corner, there, was a naked, see-through Shinji.  
The status bar read: "Assembly complete."  
Gendou, having not moved his head a bit, said, "Oh, that was easy."  
"No, commander," said Ritsuko, "the particles has only been suspended. They need to be bonded together using Kaworu's AT-Field."  
"Okay..."

Ritsuko proceeded to press a few more keys on her laptop, which was hooked to some unseen plugs under the desk, and the status bar changed.  
"Analyzing Particle Allocation Table... Importing foreign AT-Field... AT-Field Initialized... Bonding... 0.0000000001"  
From there, the figures rose steadily.  
Everyone tilted their heads down to look. They could see the Evangelion's transparent feet start to solidify at an amazingly slow rate. Mind-bogglingly slow. Gendou was speechless as he continued to stare at the feet.  
"How long will this take, Ritsuko?" Asked Makoto, entranced.  
"Shinji?"  
"No..."  
"Oh, you mean the Eva. Well, it'll take about... say, twenty hours? No, nineteen and 46 minutes. I've got that confirmed."  
Everyone's jaw dropped.  
They looked back up at the status bar.  
"0.0061304001"

Twenty minutes later, Gendou, Ritsuko, Maya, Makoto and Misato were all still sitting there, on a couch, facing the AFTPOS, and sharing around some popcorn. After one more minute of this, Gendou suddenly leapt forward on his seat, his arms on the armrests, alarmingly, and squinted.  
"Do I see... a toenail?" He exclaimed. "Isn't that a toenail, peoples? It is, isn't it?"  
Makoto leant forward too. "Eva's have toes?"  
"No," interrupted Ritsuko, and started to launch into quick speech, "an Eva is like an onion."  
Makoto looked cluelessly at Ritsuko. "It makes you cry?"  
"No, it has layers."  
Misato smiled, playfully, thinking she was getting the hint. "Oh... _layers_..."  
"What about cake?" Asked Makoto, starting to getting fascinated in this. "Cake has layers."  
"No!" said Ritsuko, getting impatient. "You peel layers off."  
"Oh, you mean we can take off the metal?"  
"Yes..." said Ritsuko, then getting unsure. "But no. What the hell was I saying, again? Oh yes. Evas are like onions: You can slice them, dice them, chop it up into little bits and transform it into plasma particles. Now, did you know that onions have the power to regenerate itself?"  
"Really...?"  
"Yes. And Evas can, too. But did you know that it can't regenerated itself when it's exposed to air?"  
"So you're saying that it can't regenerate itself when it's in air?"  
"Er... I meant that it can't regenerate itself when it's in its plasma-like form..."  
"Okay..."  
"That's right..."  
"Er... Where is this going...?"  
"No, no. You see..."

While the continued to discuss some strangely fascinating topics of the like, a door on the far side opened up, and a hospital bed-like thing rolled down by itself, slowly, with quiet, squeaky wheels. It came up to and stopped right next to the group. Five minutes later, Gendou noticed the bed with a glance.  
"Not now, Rei," he said, hastily, not taking a proper look. "We are deep in discussing in the power of regeneration in onions, and the potential use of compact, organized plasmatic-state-induction of any larger object that can be taken around in little bottles called 'Capsules'. Just one press of a button, and... Puff! It expands into its standard state. Ritsuko, however, believes that organic conversion slows down its process dramatically to the level that this is in, now, so body smuggling is unstable and difficult... On a lighter note, did you know that Evas don't have any toes?"  
When Gendou turned around to see Rei's reaction, he realized that it wasn't Rei. "Hey, this isn't Rei... Brown hair... Brown eyes... Hairy armpits..."

As he ventured down, he came to an unsightly sight, and recoiled back like he burnt his hands, again, and froze in that position of shock. His arms stiff and angular, his eyes wide and twitching.

Misato noticed Shinji, as well. "Hey, Shinji's out!"

Ritsuko walked up to the new automated bed, and read the status screen: "Nerve impulses restored : Unconscious - Dreaming : Ready for deployment"  
"Good," she said, under her breathe. She pressed a red button, and Shinji immediately began to stir and roll around.  
"Oh... I don't want to get up," he said, half agitated, half sleepily. "I was having a really good dream."  
Shinji then rolled into a particular angle that everyone who saw him could tell. They all then froze into a state of shock.  
"Yeah," said Misato, not in shock. "I can tell."  
Shinji opened his eyes, squintingly, to see a blurry image of his father in a recoiled position, frozen, and in a pained, quivering state.  
"What?" Asked Shinji, stupidly.  
Gendou managed to get out of his uncomfortable position, and looked down, scornfully at Shinji.  
"Don't mock me."  
Gendou hated show-offs.

**Intermission 4 - Black and white**

Later that night, Shinji stood in the kitchen with nothing but a towel on, waiting for Ritsuko as she rummaged through the bottom cupboard.  
"So, Ritsuko," said Shinji, trying to make conversation, "what do you usually keep in that cupboard?"  
"Just the usual inventions I made on the side," responded Ritusko. "Gendou would have said it was a crappy waste of... So I decided to keep them secret. Oh, I ought to make a mental note to configure the AFTPOS to put a cloak on all exports, next time. Ugh, sorry. (Twenty three revisions, and we overlooked clothing AGAIN!)"  
However, it wasn't like Gendou minded Ritsuko's previous failure to clothe clone-exports, anyway.  
Ritsuko began taking her inventions out, one-by-one. "We've got a brown paper bag that doesn't get oily... a homing toaster that aims its toast to the GPS-chipped plate... a time machine... ah! Here we are!"

Ritsuko then rose up, producing it. "The P2 Prototype."  
She pulled out a watch-shaped contraption that fitted in the palm of her hand. "I know you'll be glad that that old suit of your's don't work anymore... This is my latest prototype Plug Suit: The P2," she announced, proudly.

"Um... how is that a suit?" Asked Shinji, looking at the thing.  
"Just put that on your left wrist, and press these two buttons at the same time, here..." she said, pointing them out.  
Shinji did what Ritsuko told him. He pressed those two buttons, and... **Bang!** The suit sort of shot out from within the watch, and enveloped his whole body until... it looked like a plug suit. Had this been recreated in live-action film, the P2 would probably be considered cheesy CGI.  
"I like the colors," commented Shinji, turning himself around and taking a look at himself. "Silver and white: The new black."  
"Yes," said Ritsuko, enthusiastically. "But, you can change its color, too. You can even change the texture to, say, a real suit..." She pressed a few buttons on the remote control that she was carrying, and Shinji ended up in a tuxedo.  
Shinji could but exclaim at this little pleasure.  
"But here's what I wanted to show you... X-Ray."  
_Press._ Shinji's suit then turned black, and exposed his skeletal structure in great sharpness.  
"Whoa... 3-D..." said Shinji, in awe, looking at his bones.  
"And wait, there's more..." continued Ritsuko, holding a crowbar.

"Eh? What's with the crowbar?" was what Shinji was going to say before Ritsuko grabbed Shinji's arm and bashed it to hell.

"**ARGH!**" screamed Shinji, in pain, which rung throughout the geofront (in Surround Sound, again). "**ARGH...!**"  
"Shinji!" shouted Ritsuko, unsucceeding getting his attention, as Shinji continued screaming. "Shinji!"  
The Dolby Digital speakers then adjusted to a minimal volume for Ritsuko to say, clearly now, "SHINJI!"

"Oh..." Shinji, wailed, slightly less delirious. "It hurts! It hurts!"  
"Are you sure?" Asked Ritsuko, knowingly.  
"Yeah..."  
"Do you feel this?" Asked Ritsuko, as she did something to Shinji's arm. She picked up Shinji's arm, and waved it about. Shinji's broken bones started grinding against each other (visibly through the suit), and the arm flopped about like rubber.  
"Okay..." said Shinji, beginning to realize something. "I don't feel anything..."  
"Yeah, that's the idea," said Ritsuko. "I was sick and tired of you screaming every time the Eva got bashed up. Now, we have an anti-pain feature. It injects my own secret formula of pain-relievers into your blood-stream instantaneously with the pain stimulant... I'm a genius. Now, would you like to press that button on your watch?"  
Shinji was trying, but found that his left arm was dangling beyond his reach. "I can't! My arm is dead... It's too low..."  
"Fine, let me do it."  
_Press._ Shinji's arm restored itself like that.

"Hey, it restored itself!" Shinji went, stating the obvious. "I am **INVINCIBLE!**"  
"You're not invincible, yet," said Ritsuko, smiling. "Not until that suit comes with a hood or something."  
"What's this?" mumbled Shinji, as he scrolled down a list on his watch. "Invisibility?"  
Without so much as a "Can I press this?", Shinji went invisible.  
"Whoa! I am **INVISIBLE!**" Shinji went, stating the obvious.  
"Oh, Shinji," said Ritsuko, "your head is still floating in mid-air... until I make a hood for it, that is."  
"Oh, said Shinji, disappointed. "What's this, then? Invisibility II?"  
Without so much as a "Is this the boy's locker room?", Shinji's suit went invisible. "ARGH! DON'T LOOK AT ME!"

Gendou was walking by when he saw Shinji, naked, again. He errupted.  
"**Thou mock ME!**"  
His voice was deep and threatening. In fact, he quickly went back to a state insanity as he grabbed the crowbar off Ritsuko and began bashing up Shinji, mercilessly. Shinji tried to shield himself, helplessly.

Unimpressed, Ritsuko pressed a button, and a blue, bubble shield popped up. Gendou's crowbar bounced off, bent. Looking briefly at it, Gendou continued to try to bash it up with all his rage, failing miserably.  
"Give it up, Gendou," said Ritsuko, smirkingly. "You know you have heart problems."  
Gendou grunted in frustration and stopped. He looked dangerously at Ritsuko, then Shinji... "I will have my revenge!"  
Gendou turned around, and stomped away.  
"Revenge is a dish best served cold!" Shouted Shinji as Gendou was walking off. It seemed to be some kind of a come-back.  
Gendou twisted around, half-way down the hall. "I heard that!" he bellowed. "And I tell you, now... my revenge will be sweet!" Gendou turned and continued.  
"Revenge is actually very bitter, but works well with soy sauce."  
Gendou did not turn around, again, but continued stomping down the hall with black, angry, squiggly marks coming out of his head.

_Black, angry, squiggly marks coming out of characters' head is a typical feature of contempt in Western comics._

Some time, later, the next day, up on the streets of Tokyo-3, the angel continued to chased Unit-02 around... still.  
As Asuka decided to make a turn, her umbilical cable tripped the angel, who went rolling down the street like a bowling ball and smashed into a weird building with the sound of a ten-pin strike.  
What was weird about that particular building was that it fell down, slowly, like an empty upturned box, and underneath this box was... a giant hose.  
The angel looked curiously at the thing, and decided to switch it on. A black liquid spurted out of the hose, and the angel drank it.

Angry, red lights flared around in Central Dogma and loud alarming noises fired up, as writing spluttered onto the screens of NERV.  
"Damn," Ritsuko whispered.  
A particular screen next to Ritsuko said: "MAGI analyzing situation..."  
With a beep, a second later, a long list of indiscernible text spilt on to the screen.  
"What is this?" Asked Gendou, much like his old self. "What is the angel drinking?"  
"Um..." hesitated Ritsuko.  
"What is it?"  
"Okay," said Ritsuko, admittingly. "It's my secret stash of prototype Liquorish LCL. I knew you'd say something about financial difficulties, so I hid them away for my own purposes."  
"**DAMN YOU, RITSUKO!**" Exploded Gendou. "**YOU _KNOW_ I LOVE LIQUORISH!**"

Every single person in NERV barfed at the thought of liquorish. They immediately began yelling and shouting protests and insults at the two.  
"Freaks! Evil! Monster!"  
One person began a chant, which quickly spread among all the staff around.  
"Cru-ci-fy him! Cru-ci-fy him!"  
The janitor pulled out a couple of large crosses, and marched with some of the others, shaking them about, angrily.  
"Look everyone..." said Ritsuko.  
"Death to liquorish! Death to YOU!"  
"... I know you hate liquorish, and want to kill us both for it, but there's something more important that can kill us all!"  
"Cru-ci-fy them! Cru-ci-fy them!"  
"**That angel can cause the next apocalypse!**" Shouted Ritsuko. "It's here, straight out of the MAGI!" She waved some papers around in her hand.  
Maya took it off Ritsuko, and looked through it.  
"My God, she's right!"  
The janitor gasped, "I knew it!" like he knew it all along.  
"**What?**" Exclaimed Gendou.  
Ritsuko explained further. "The Liquorish LCL just so happened to be the greatest source of energy for the angel, and it is starting to start its ultimate end! When is gets enough energy, it will self-destruct! It will blow up and explode! IT WILL END THE WORLD!"

Everyone freaked at this.  
"Can't we do something?" Shouted Gendou, trying to be heard over the hundreds of wailing NERV personnel.  
"No," said Ritsuko. "I have 200,000 tonnes of this, and I can't cut off the valve! Asuka is drunk, Kensuke is retarded, and Unit-01 is still in reconstruction!"  
"Then the hell is Rei doing?" Shouted Gendou.  
"She's..." Ritsuko paused to think. "Hey, what _is_ she doing?"

The MAGI screen flashed about, saying: "Triangulating Ayanami, Rei... Rerouting logic circuits... Ayanami's History: Today, 13:24:24 - Transferred into hospitalization from Tank-02"  
A surveillance screen popped up, instantly, showing a Rei in a hospital bed.  
"Cause of injury: 'Brain trauma via Trip-and-fall' Status: Comatose, critical"  
What happened was that Rei misjudged the distance of a small tricycle whilst taking a stroll along her tanks (humming "Fly Me To The Moon" whilst thinking about Shinji) because of her non-functioning eye, and altogether, tripped over it and smashed her brain case to kingdom come.

Ritsuko grunted, "We're gonna die."  
"Wait," interrupted Maya, looking up from her screen, "it says, here, we have a 1/5 chance of being able to stop the angel, depending on timing. The angel will finish drinking the LCL and blow up in exactly twenty minutes, but Unit-01 will be complete in 18:53 minutes... GUYS! WE CAN DO THIS!"  
Everyone in NERV was startled excitedly.  
Gendou, regaining his cool, turned towards the crowd, saying, quietly, to himself, "Let's do it..."  
_The end begins._

**Intermission 5 - Sleeping beauty**

Ode to Joy begun.  
Thus, everyone raced to the room of the AFTPOS, carrying many relevant assortments to cheer on the reconstructing Eva. Whether or not cheering it on was going to speed up the process didn't matter, the people cheered it on like fans at a 100m sprint of the Olympics. The Evangelion was currently being worked on at the top of its head. Only the horn was needed to be done.  
"98.5112359551"  
They knew the end was nigh. But they cheered on with manic enthusiasm.  
"Go! Go! Go!"

All the while, the angel, above, drank furiously at the LCL like Misato on a new mix of Yebisu. It almost looked crazy. Its eyes widening, splashes of LCL flying. There seemed to be no end, despite the very proximity of it.

The NERV, too, seemed to cheer on to no end.  
"Go! Go! Go!"

And the angel drunk, whilst the other two Evas danced the Macarena (having no clue as to the seriousness of the situation, and being drunk/retarded).  
_Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!_

"Go! Go! Go!"

_Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!_

"Go! Go!"

_Gulp! Gulp!_

Yet, the glowing, white corridors were quiet. One wondered in, intruding in to its serene atmosphere. His footsteps echoed down the corridor off the hard, indifferent ground. Yet, quiet. The footsteps then became like the soft corridors; the sound faded into the enveloping glow. Ambiguous was this place, like it may not have existed. A numbness hung.

"Go! Go! Go!"

_Gulp! Splash... Gulp!_

He happened to pass another door. This door was open; but from inside, he could feel a familiar presence. Silence echoed as he paused, and looked through that door.

"Go! Go!"

There was a placid look, but astonishment ensued without seeming to change it. His mouth was relaxed, but gaping. He eyes hung, but where wide. A silent shock was on his face. And from that pause, he carefully walked up, slowly. His eyes hovered over that hospital bed, and onto the figure inside. The glowing brightness enveloped like a stifling fog. It obscured this figure as if afraid to let it be seen.

_Gulp! Gulp!_

The silence of his heart thumped without a sound. His stomach agitated, stiffening his throat, causing a disagreeable taste in his mouth. His steps were made painful, yet numb. Yet his eyes... passing through fog and fear... came to rest with the girl in that bed. Her fair, blue hair rested on her bandaged forehead. Her pale eyelids rested where her soft, crimson eyes would lay... But the only crimson was the crimson of those blood-soaked bandages.

"Go! Go!"

The ambiguity of the room cushioned his soft call for her... "Rei?"

_Gulp! Gulp!_

"Go!"

He came up, next to Rei. Her face... Empty. It was not sleep. All had seemed to have left her. Only her breath signalled her life; invisible, unspoken. This, but also, as he realized, her beauty still glowed from within. But fragile... feeble. So weak, it was, that he could but close his eyes from it, holding his sadness behind his own eyelids.

"Go!"

He reflected. He thought back, aimlessly, away. Until...

_Gulp!_

_This... was my fault. It could only be me... If I hadn't saved my father, I would have been rid of him. Misato wouldn't have gone insane from him. Rei wouldn't have lost her eye from her. Rei... she wouldn't have had brain damage...Now, she lies. Now, dying._

"GO!"

Containment was not possible. Leaning heavily on the small rails, Shinji sobbed.

"GO!"

His first tear escaped his eyelids, rolling down his nose. It fell. It fell on to Rei's eye.

"**GO!**"

... And her eyelids stirred. Both her eyes slowly opened.  
Her eyes, they looked up to meet him.  
And Shinji's eyes were open, again, to meet Rei's...  
"Rei!" His voice, echoing with the room's silence.  
His face, looking over hers. For an ambiguous while, they looked into each other's eyes. They exchanged inexplicable thoughts through only their eyes; no words were needed, now. Only one more...  
"Rei..."

There was a sudden noise, and Misato skidded through the door and into the scene.  
"Hey, Rei," Misato said, half puffed, and holding on to her hat (that she was wearing for the occasion). "Shinji! The Eva's just done! Let's go! We've got a minute and ten seconds to do this! Come on!"  
With a lightning grip of Shinji's arm, she yanked Shinji right out of the room.  
"And don't worry," Misato said with a change of tone, and winking, "I'll give you two some 'alone' time afterwards. Hehe."  
Shinji and Misato disappeared.

Rei simply sat up, still, and looked through the empty door. The last few words from Misato echoed with her footsteps as silence slowly reverted the corridors back to its quietness. Rei lifted her hand up to her mouth, lightly, and smiled to herself.

#_Checking nerve links..._#  
#_Passing absolute critical line. Borderline cleared! Connecting mutual lines..._#  
#_Checking harmonic values..._#  
#_Calculating synch rate..._#  
Ignoring all that junk, Misato stood with her hands crossed, looking at the image of the angel, bloating itself, and just about finishing the liquorish. The world ends when the liquorish does. Everyone around Misato were either in a frenzy trying to get things done, or looking tensely at the screens.  
One announcement did register to Misato, however...  
"Ready for launch!"  
"**Eva Launch!**"

The Evangelion shot up, with electrical and frictional sparks shooting out of the rails, at maximum speed. The geoport opened up, merely 70 meters from the angel, but the Extruding End-Track didn't pop up, again.  
"Major?" Asked Maya.  
Misato turned to Maya, smiled and winked. "Automatic Matrix-moves."

The giant of white flew up into the air from the ground like a Balrog. With amazing acrobatic maneuvering, the Evangelion eventually landed with a bang into a crouching position. Its cape, that came with it, followed gracefully with it, cloaking the white Evangelion and spreading the rest back onto the road.  
From the dramatic crouch, the Evangelion slowly stood up, covering its whiteness with the gray cape, facing the angel, now.

The angel twisted around from its hose, just in time to see the Evangelion in its glowing glory. The giant marshmallow man roared at it.

The Evangelion whipped its arms out, spreading its cape, and charged, full-on, at the angel. With a a loud clash, the angel was body-slammed away from the hose. With the angel down, the Evangelion rose up, took the hose and crushed the metallic opening with its hand until there was no hole for the LCL to flow out of.

Again, the angel roared, got up and charged back towards the Evangelion.

Next to Unit-01, an equipment's launch case popped up and opened up. There, an Enhanced AT-Shield (EAT-Shield) was held, built specifically by the MAGI for this occasion. Grabbing this, Unit-01 held this against the angel like a police shield, flipping the giant marshmallow man into the sky.  
As the angel fell back down, Unit-01 got hold of an EAT-Baseball bat and used it to whack the angel to the other side of the city.

There, the angel hit the ground and rolled along to the edge of the city and stopped. The thing got angry and managed to back stand up. This is when it decided to show what it really was made of. Not literally, of course. (What it was made of was quite apparent.)

Next to the angel was _Tokyo-3 High_'s rival school - _Blue-line High_.  
The angel gripped the school's flagpole, pulling the pole right out of the ground. A large chunk of the cement was still attached to it, giving weight. This became a weapon.  
Swinging it around with skill, the angel ended up hitting Asuka's Evangelion, which just so happened to be right next to it. The cement smashed into debris, and the Evangelion fell, drunkedly.  
The angel gave it a twirl or two, making deep whirling sounds, finished off in a cool stance, intimidatingly.

_Taken right out of The Matrix Reloaded where Neo pulls out a sign post._

Recently, Shinji was at an Inter-school Sports Day. They were competing against Blue-line High, and Shinji was doing javelin... That time, he lost at it.

With a blast of deadly fury, Shinji screamed, "**THOU MOCK _ME_?**"

Of course, at this point, Shinji would have gone berserk and saved the day, but his P2 had automatically injected a relaxant into his bloodstream. This was insult over injury for Shinji, who desperately wanted to be angry.  
"Cool it, Shinji," said Misato's voice, sternly. "I'm sending Unit-00 in."  
Kensuke's gulp was heard. "Me!" He squealed.  
"Yes. Now go, Kensuke!"

Unit-00 was standing, shaking with nervousness. Now that it was his time, Kensuke suddenly didn't feel all that enthusiastic about tackling a Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan that turns things into bad gas.  
An equipment's launch case popped up next to Kensuke and the door slid down. An extending boxing glove sprung out and whacked Kensuke right into the scene.

Shinji threw Kensuke his shield. "Here, Kensuke, I'll cover for you!"  
But Kensuke was a quivering wreck. "I... I can't do it!" He held the EAT-S loosely, almost about to drop it.  
If he couldn't help Shinji, no one could.

**Intermission 6 - Look ma, no balls**

Gendou, frustrated, signaled to Ritsuko. She nodded back, and began typing into the MAGI. Misato's head turned.  
"Ritsuko?"  
Ritsuko pointed at the holographic screen, not looking up. "Ninja Scroll..."  
She hit one final button... Misato's eyes flew to the MAGI screen, which read: "DVD confirmed. Uploading to Unit-00 pilot..."

All of a sudden, Kensuke got a weird feeling of watching Ninja Scroll all over again, but with something different. It was intense. It was piercing. It crammed his head with... Ninjitsu.  
With all this information forced into Kensuke's head via those A10 nodes, he froze, momentarily, tense and angular. His head was unable to worry about his body as it tried to sort out what it was looking at. As the final images hit him like a ton of bricks, Kensuke screamed at the end.  
"**Hell yeah!**"  
It was all only two seconds. Shinji smiled cooly, seeing as Kensuke has pretty much loaded.  
"Ready, Kensuke?" Shinji said, with a smile that only Kaworu could do. "Let's beat the HELL out of this one!"  
They both looked at the angel with the evil flagpole. Two against one.  
Thus begun a fight like none you've ever seen before.

Shinji ran up to the angel with his EAT-B.  
Speed lines were imaginarily drawn streaking past Unit-01. Jumping into the sky, Shinji screamed, bringing his bat over his head.  
And now directly over the angel, Shinji brought it down.

The angel was missed, and the EAT-B smashed the road with that terrifying force, causing a shockwave that rippled through the ground.  
As Unit-01's cape flapped behind it, the angel swung its flagpole around over its head and whacked the Evangelion's neck down. Shinji painfully hit the ground, and the angel then put its foot on it. The anti-pain feature did not work above Shinji's neck.

Kensuke's screamed came out as he ran, too. He jumped to the side, bouncing off a building, and swung his EAT-S to hit the angel's butt.

It didn't really do anything except attract the angel's attention as it swiveled around.  
The angel stuck the pole between Unit-00's legs and flicked it upwards. It would have caused severe pain and family problems for Kensuke after a terrific metallic crunch could be heard.  
The angel continued to swing the pole again. A whack of Unit-00's head to the left! A twist, then a whack to Unit-00's head to the right!

Before further damage was to be done, Shinji finally got hold of the EAT-B, and brought the angel down with a twist of its legs. Unit-01 then back flipped away to a safe distance with Kensuke.

"How's it, Kensuke?" Asked Shinji, worrying about that between-the-leg hit.  
Unit-00 stood up. "Actually, the pole to the groin wasn't that bad..."  
"Yeah, that's right," said Shinji, recalling from the textbook. "Unit-00 doesn't have any balls.  
"**WHAAA!**"

Kensuke panically checked himself under his plug suit.

"Kensuke, watch out!"  
Before Kensuke could register what he saw when he turned around, a flagpole smashed full-on on his face.  
Again, the flagpole whipped the other way and smashed the Evangelion's back. As Kensuke fell on his knees, the flagpole came down to have a go at his neck. However, Kensuke finally managed to stop it with his EAT-Shield.  
Shinji ran, jumped into the air with an unnecessary 360 turn, and whacked right at the angel's stomach! But the bouncy consistency of the Giant Marshmallow Man like that of Misato's repelled Shinji's baseball bat.  
Shinji went again, in frustration at the angel's head.  
The head wobbled for a second, but the angel recovered almost instantly.

Fuyutsuki was standing on a soap box, waving a stack of small pieces of paper in his hands. Everyone gathered around him excitedly like they were trying to buy shares.  
"Step right up! Place your bets, now, peoples! Who'll win? Who will be the last man/eva/angel standing...? Minimum 500 yen, peoples; but no limit up!"

The angel gave a hideous, evil glare after that baseball bat.  
It kicked its flagpole from off the ground at Unit-01, which bounced off the Evangelion and landed back into the angel's chubby hands.

With a whoosh, Shinji began blocking each strike from the angel, quite successfully. They came like rounds out of a machine gun. And the angel slowly pushed Unit-01 down the road with this.  
Each strike was as hard as the last. Each of them, furious. Each of them, quick. Not just hits with the flagpole, but also punches and whooshing kicks, that enough to rival any Joe Blow from The Matrix.

At last, the angel unexpectedly made a sweep at Unit-01's legs - blocked - twisted around and swung the flagpole to Unit-01's neck. This time, it did hit. Shinji felt his neck get smashed like he stuck his head out the window and got hit with by signpost whilst the car was driving at 50 mph.  
"Damn you, Ritsuko! Give me a hood!"

Kensuke finally jumped in, and knocked the angel's head with the butt of his EAT-Shield. The angel stumbled back for two seconds before it recovered, but not before both Evangelions got up, together, to begun a double-attack back down the road.

Shinji swept at the angel's legs, but missed as the angel jumped over this. Whilst it was still in the air, however, it realized the foot of Unit-00 flying right at its head.

"No shadow kick!" yelled Kensuke as he sailed through the air.

"Eh?" said Ritsuko, looking at her DVDs again. "Wasn't that a move from Kung-fu and not Ninjitsu? Kensuke, what are you trying to pull?"  
"I actually learnt this from Hong Kong action movies. No fancy DVD uploaders needed, Miss Akagi."  
"Ah, shaddup."

The angel used both its fat hands and brought Kensuke's kick down. Kensuke pulled out his shield from behind as he was still in the air, and brought it down on the angel's head with a bang!  
The angel did not have time to react to Shinji's baseball bat to the head, that came immediately after. This, in turn, did not give the angel enough time to react to the EAT-Shield that came back down on its head again. A second later, the angel decided to retreat a few hundred meters back. It backflipped through.  
As it landed down, Shinji decided it wouldn't get away so easily, and had a go at it right after landing. But no, the angel followed through with a second backflip.  
It was like trying to whack a flying piñata.  
But Shinji tried again, this time, hitting _downwards_, not _side ways_. And he got it.

Now on the ground, the angel evidently came to great fury. With its great, heavy arm, the angel swung it at Unit-01's head. Shinji put up his baseball bat before the angel could touch him (which would have absorb Unit-01 in an instant); but the force sent Unit-01's head flying into a building, crumbling it like a sand castle.

Kensuke roared, pulling out his reverberating knife and flung it at the angel.  
The angel whack the flying knife to the side with its flagpole with ungodly speed. The knife sliced into another building, and was lost within.

Ritsuko was at lost. In fact, she started shouting in bewilderment,"How the hell could a bloody flagpole _not_ get sliced by a reverberating knife? We can cut through a military submarine, why not a bloody _flag_pole?"  
"It's..." Fuyutsuki began, slowly as if reliving a past horror from back in his early life. "That flagpole belongs to... No, it can't be!" He gasped. "That flag! No, it is!"  
"What?"  
"That flagpole belongs to Blue-line High!"  
Ritsuko looked at Fuyutsuki strangely. "... Blue-line?"  
Fuyutsuki sunk with fear into his seat, lower and lower. "... High."  
"Um..." Ritsuko considered sending Kouzou to the psychiatrist as well. "Yeah, hi."  
"No! This is Blue-line! _The_ Blue-line High! Formally the Green Soaring High from Izu, relocated!"  
Ritsuko then recalled the name. "Hey, wait... this is the actual school that kicked Ikari's ass back in the 00s! Hey, yeah! I remember! Gendou got into brawls with those high-school punks! Ha!"  
Ritsuko's sudden cheerfulness didn't do anything to Fuyutsuki's state.

Now, Kensuke can give back what the angel gave him twice: a head-bash to the left, and a head-bash to the right! One more for good measure straight down!  
The angel fell backwards, onto its back. But in doing so, it kicked one leg into the air.  
The leg kicked Kensuke's shield right out of his hands and sent it soaring into the sky. Kensuke's shield was gone.  
But, being on the ground, Shinji came up and put one foot back on the angel like it did in the beginning. Shinji raised his baseball bat to give one defining blow at the angel's head.  
But he angel was not beaten, yet. Kensuke's EAT-S came back down from the sky like Buzz Lightyear coming in for touch-down and hit Unit-01's neck.

Shinji dropped the bat, stumbling back.  
"My God, why the neck? Why does it have to be the _neck_?" he screamed as he went back those few paces. "Ritsuko, seriously, you should give me a hood!"  
On the ground, the angel caught Shinji's bat, and rolled back, jumping to its feet.  
Standing, the angel paused in another cool pose with its brand new bat, suggesting for a Kodak Moment™.

Again, Unit-01 got up next to Unit-00. Shinji stared at the angel, then at Kensuke.  
"What the hell are we gonna do?"  
"Uh..." said Kensuke, thinking. "How about Toji? Maybe he can distract it for a while?"  
"Er..." said Shinji with a sweatdrop, "I think we've had enough distractions from him for a while."  
"Yeah," said Kensuke, nodding. "Talk about short..."

All of a sudden, a translucent, orange baseball bat came across Unit-00's head: The EAT-Bat!  
Kensuke stumbled back, quickly, and raised his shield for the second blow. However, something strange happened when the EAT-B came down onto the EAT-S.  
"What happened?" Asked Kensuke, surprised. "The baseball bat disappeared into my shield..."  
"The EAT-Fields," explained Ritsuko at mach speed, "had just cancelled each other out, Kensuke. Both will come back if you keep both EAT-equipment away from each other."  
The angel pulled the bat out of the shield now, and whacked at Kensuke's unprotected legs. Kensuke fell on his (Eva's) face.  
Shinji, having hesitated for a long moment, overcame his hatred for Blue-line High and took the angel's flagpole for himself. _Let me just rip the bloody Blue-line flag off it, first..._  
Now, having dishonored the school, Shinji went on to swing the pole at the angel. He missed, and so went again with a raging scream, mercilessly.

**Intermission 7 - Look again**

Gendou lent back in his chair for a while, looking at the action.  
"Has anyone thought of giving them a gun?" he said.  
"Gendou..." Ritsuko said, smartly, "you're so primitive."  
"Primitive?" Gendou smirked. "I'm not the one who goes ahead to tell the boys to swing baseball bats and flagpoles around at each other."  
"The flagpole was the angel's idea. Not mine."  
Gendou smirked even more. "Then the angel's way smarter than you... I wonder if we can hire him..." he went on, stroking his chin.  
"I believe that flagpole had the flag of Blue-line High," said Ritsuko, smiling.  
Gendou paused at the word.  
"... Damn those bastards."

Smash! Unit-00 flew into a building, crumbling it down to rubble.  
The angel swung its bat again. Shinji dodged it.  
Whoosh! The bat swung around, again. This was blocked by the flagpole, making a terrific blast of noise.  
Bang!  
Bash!  
Bosh!  
Don!  
Baki!  
Patan!  
_Oo!_ thought Ritsuko. _We haven't had any Japanese sound effects for quite a while, now!_

_And, yes, those are real Japanese sound effects, predominately found in manga._

At last, Kensuke got back up. But the angel was on a role, now. Having fixed Unit-01 up for a good three seconds, the angel backflipped, kicking Kensuke's shield into the air, again, and landing at a distance enough for one more attack.  
With one, almighty swing with its EAT-B, the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan smashed Unit-00 square in the groin with a truly unholy (- yet literally holy, considering it's an _angel_ -), unprecedented force!

Kensuke's high-pitched scream pierced the city as he went off, and fading from audibility as Unit-00, itself, sailed into the distance through the air, and over the horizon.

His last words were, "Shinji! I thought you said Eva had no balls...!"

The angel looked off at the horizon, shading its eyes with its free hand.  
Shinji, too, turned to look at Unit-00 as a speck on the blue dusk.

Like a punch-line, the speck shined into a twinkle with a _ping_, and was gone.

_Taken from Pokémon; usually the last sight of the villains. Anyone who hasn't seen Pokémon won't get this._

  
Shinji looked at his opponent, the angel, who had just performed this miraculous feat, like David Copperfield.  
"... It actually had balls?" 

Everyone at NERV was silent in this moment of uncertain suspense.

Ritsuko was the first to break the silence.  
"Commander? What now?"  
"What?" Gendou said, looking up, at last. "I wasn't looking. I'm watching The Lion King on DVD for the first time..."  
"That DVD was available twenty years ago."  
"No," said Gendou, looking at his screen, "this was digitally remastered again."  
"You ought to find yourself an anime, Gendou," Ritsuko said, dismissingly.  
"I would," said Gendou, agitated, "if that mystery person hadn't burnt my manga when I was young and carefree." Gendou could still remember those good, old days.  
So could Ritsuko. "You were never _carefree_, Gendou, let alone young. Even in that brawl 16 years ago."  
"I was so!" Gendou said, hitting his desk with his palms. "It was a family tradition to bring bullet-proof vests to pubs!"  
"And a police helmet?" Smirked Ritsuko. "And a mini-can of pepper spray? And"  
"**THE FAKE GLASSES/MOUSTACHE AND NOSE WAS KOUZOU'S IDEA!**"  
Kouzou, standing by the sidelines, added with a smile, "The groin guard was my idea, too."  
"Besides," continued Gendou, closing his eyes as he talked, and tilting his head up, "that guy from Blue-line High was extremely brutal. And I despise those Tuesdays with the wedgies..."  
"Okay," interrupted Ritsuko, "we don't have time to look back at your favorite pastimes, Commander..."  
"Then don't you think it's about time to give that boy a gun?"  
Ritsuko and Gendou looked at each other, intensely.  
"Or a groin guard?" Interrupted Fuyutsuki.

Shinji hit the angel.  
The angel hit Shinji.  
Shinji hit the angel.  
The angel hit Shinji.  
Shinji hit the angel.  
The angel was about to hit Shinji, again.  
"Okay, wait..." Shinji said, doing a time-out sign. "Time out."  
Apparently, there must have been some, great, unwritten code of combat between angels and evas because the giant marshmallow man stopped and went off to have a sit-down.

Shinji used the time to undo the rope on his flagpole. He did a few knots, here and there, and, "Okay, I'm done."

The angel got back up, and they both returned to their original positions.  
The angel held the bat in mid-air, arching an arm over his face, and Shinji stood with his legs wide apart - one in the air, and his arms out at weird angles to resemble a tree. For a second, they were still statues (laughable if displayed at the local park, for they were utterly ridiculously posed); then they resumed battle like it never stopped.  
The fight went on for a full minute more.

"Talk about overkill," commented Fuyutsuki with a handful of popcorn. Though action movies were great; sometimes, they just go on and on to the point of monotony, and have all the critics bawling it to hell for lack of plot development. "It's exactly like fifteen years ago, with The Matrix Reloaded. Indeed, it's been fifteen years..."  
"But now we know for sure," said Gendou, "The King has returned."  
"Are we talking about The Lord of the Rings, now?"  
"No," Gendou said, looking from his screen. His eyes were big and watery like someone unable to resist an extremely sappy movie, and were streaming tears of happiness. "Simba has returned."

At last, Shinji had the angel sent flying across the road.  
Having been prepared for this, Shinji whipped out the rope from under his cape, and twirled it in the air above his head. As the angel landed, Shinji threw the rope and lassoed the EAT-Bat. Having a firm grip of his baseball bat, Shinji jerked it towards himself.  
Weirdly, the baseball bat did fly towards Shinji, but hit him straight in the head.

"So much for automatic Matrix-moves," scoffed Gendou, a smirk in his voice.  
"Well, at least I've disarmed the angel," Shinji said, defiantly. "But watch this!"  
He whipped up his flagpole in his hands, and did an assortment of twirly, kung-fu-ey, Matrixy moves with it like a cross between a _Cirque du Soleil_ freak and a pen trick. He finished off in a signature-Neo way, and greatly intimidated the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan.

"How's that for Automatic Matrix-moves?"  
"So what?" Said Gendou, seeming not to care.

Ignoring the slight disagreement between the father-son, the angel considered its circumstances. It had no weapon left, and the cloaked, purple Evangelion-thing had a Blue-line High flagpole and Automatic Matrix-moves. With this in mind, the angel decided to take its most drastic measure: to use its secret weapon.  
The angel ripped off a blob off its arm, and threw it at Unit-01. Shinji deflected it easily with a flick of his wrist like it was expecting that.  
"This is dangerous, Shinji," said Ritsuko's voice, "remember that you will be absorbed, again, if you let any of that touch you."  
Taking this in, Shinji just smiled with one answer. "... Automatic Matrix-moves."

**Intermission 8 - Marshmallow time**

Suddenly, Shinji launched towards the giant marshmallow man. It was dramatic. It was spectacular. It was in bullet-time. And this was it...

The angel furiously started ripping pieces of itself and hurled it at the Evangelion. Shinji whipped all these away, all the while running at full speed towards the angel.  
The angel threw another one.  
Shinji repelled it in another smooth movement.  
The angel did another. And another.  
But still, Shinji prevailingly whipped each blob out of his way. He twisted, he turned, doing each. Each blob landed into a building, causing it to explode in a confetti of dust and rubble.  
By the time Shinji was half-way there, already. The angel ran out of arm to throw.  
"Suck!" shouted Shinji.

As quickly as he said that, the angel's arm completely regenerated.  
And now, it was time for the angel to use its secret tactic. Holding up its arm, the angel whipped its hand around like a helicopter blade. Suddenly, bits of pieces of marshmallow detached themselves, and were thrown at Unit-01 like paintball bullets.

The pieces were smaller, this time, and were far greater in numbers. If you thought ancient Egyptian booby-traps with flying wooden sticks coming out of the holes in the walls were dangerous, this was more so.  
Shinji knew what he needed to do.

In pure, digital accuracy and confidence, the automatic Matrix-moves mechanism alliteration, here launched Shinji off the ground, and spun him through the air. Holding up his flagpole, Shinji rivaled the angel's helicopter-impersonation, spinning around in bullet-time.

_The story-writer would like to say, on a side note, that he would love to register the trade mark for "Marshmallow-time" specifically for this fic. It's got a bit of a ring to it._

But Shinji was more graceful.  
As he spun at high speeds, still getting closer to the angel, the bits and pieces of angel flew at Unit-01. As the pole went round, the angel blobs were flung away from Unit-01 as it came near it like pulp from an open blender. It was a dangerous feat, but this cheat defied all.

Now, thus far, Unit-01 began to come back down from the peak of its curve.  
The angel very soon realized it won't be able to succeed at destroying this mean, purple fighting machine. It had stopped to brace the Eva as it came right at it from the air like a frisbee.

Before you could notice it, Shinji landed on one foot, and swept low at the angel's feet with his other. Only in bullet-time could you see this.

The angel anticipated this move, and had jumped to avoid it. But the Evangelion, still carrying the rotational inertia, twisted around into the air, again, and had a belt at the angel's back with the flagpole.

Now having flipped horizontally, Shinji landed on his other foot, his left foot flew up at the angel's head. The flagpole followed immediately. Both hit the angel, no doubt each blow was a severe blow to the angel's strength. Each blow brought it closer down to defeat.

Shinji, still traveling in bullet-time, came low again, and altogether flicked the angel off its feet.

Shinji twisted 360 degrees, again, high. The angel was still hanging in the air when the Eva smashed it right down to the ground.

It crashed to the ground with tremendous force - bullet-time having, at last, ceased - shattering surrounding buildings, and making an explosion of dust from under the cracked tarmac road.

The dust enveloped both giants, obscuring visibility.  
Shinji finished off with a spin of the pole in his hands, and finishing in a stance that only the Automatic Matrix-moves could have induced; not that anyone would have seen it.

The dust cloud slowly evanesced to reveal Unit-01 standing, unscratched and cool.

"What do you say, now, father?" Shinji's voice said.  
There was a long pause from Gendou, looking speechless at the screen. He withdrew after a moment from his seat. He had finally been defeated. He crouched in a corner, looking miserably at his betting ticket be bought: "Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan - 1:3"  
He had bet on the angel. ¥25,360  
"A crappy waste of money, Gendou..." he said to himself, miserably. "A crappy waste..."  
Ritsuko giggled to herself at a floor beneath Gendou's, and waved her own ticket: "Third Child 'Shinji' of NERV - 2:5" at ¥20,000.  
Gendou had brought himself to the edge of defeat. Here he was, a piece of paper in his hands showing his confidence in the angel's victory over his son. And now, the angel is lying on the road having had its ass kicked with Matrix-moves, surpassing its own. Not a good position to be in.  
Then again, Makoto was sulking in the corner, staring painfully at his "Kensuke of Ninja Scroll - 1:1,000,005" ticket.

As the dust cloud had nearly cleared, a dirty shape of a giant marshmallow man emerged from the ground. It got up slowly, but defiantly, staring at Unit-01 with death.  
The angel, now filled with a long-ripened hatred, made its last stand.  
Clenching its fist, it threw one, big punch at Unit-01.

Shinji dodged it at the last second.  
And you know what? Slow-motion took effect for one, last time. And at that point, Shinji used all his strength and whacked his flagpole upwards. It hit the angel's chin.

Petty, you say? No.  
In slow-motion, it looked absolutely horrendous. Look again.  
The flagpole went up, coming closer to the chin, flowing through the liquid-like air with a deep, flooping sound. Neologism required to describe this sound. And now, the flagpole made contact. The look of it was almost indescribable.  
Pieces of marshmallow ripped off from the friction. The skin split like severe stretch marks, a thin portion melting away. One could imagine the horrifying imagery had this skin not been of marshmallow.  
The entire head, itself, reacted like a slow, thick fluid in a balloon. The force made large ripples up the head. But even the word "ripple" isn't accurate; more of a contortion of that evil face like twisted play-doh. You may have neglected the fact, but the angel felt pain. From the pain in its face, it was contorted into something altogether undefinable and as twisted as the most twisted thing your own dreams could conjure.  
An absolutely terrible sight, but only lasting for a second.

Shinji automatically dropped his pole after the strike, and immediately jumped into the air.  
His arms spread like an eagle's wings. His legs drawn back like into a crouch.  
When his legs were level with the angel's deformed head, a leg lashed out and kicked the angel with unspeakable force.

The angel went sailing, and landed on the other side of the city.  
It hit the ground, bringing up dust, sliding along the road, not seeming to slow down.  
At last, it hit a building, making it topple over. This was rather unexpected, as that particular building fell down, slowly, like an empty upturned box, and underneath this box was... a giant hose. The angel looked curiously at the thing.

**Intermission 9 - The end of all things**

A fist slammed onto a desk, and Gendou glared evilly at Ritsuko.  
Ritsuko looked back with her hand scratching the back of her head and a sweat drop. "Ummm... I suppose I forgot to tell you about that _other_ stash of Liquorish LCL..."  
The janitor pulled out the crosses, again, and shook them in the air.  
"Cru-ci-fy them! Cru-cify them!"  
Gendou glared at Ritsuko even more, "Ritsuko, you little..."  
Ritsuko hung her head, looking at the floor. "I am ashamed."

Although Gendou would have felt extreme contempt for not having been informed about that particular flavor of LCL, he also saw the bright side.  
Gendou simply sat back in his chair and smirked at everyone in the Command Center, waving his Angel betting ticket back at them. "Who's the sucker?"  
NERV looked back annoyingly at Gendou.  
"We want you to hang your head in shame..." said everyone. "On a rope."

No time, now. Maya's face came out of her computer screen, and shouted, "Dr. Akagi! The angel is now drinking it!"  
Ritsuko's eyes flashed back to the screens, and her pupil shrunk immediately. The MAGI screens flash up with the countdown timer, starting again.  
"00:15:53"

_That is, 15 seconds and 53 milliseconds; not 15 minutes. Whether you like it or not._

Ode To Joy begun once more.  
"WE NEED TO GET SHINJI THE LANCE! MAKOTO, SEND IT UP!"  
Shigeru twisted in his seat, "NO RESPONSE! MAKOTO IS IN A STATE OF DEPRESSION!"  
An infra-red picture of Makoto stuck squatting in a dark corner, holding his Kensuke ticket confirmed that, automatically.  
"My God."  
"I'll do it..." Maya said. She began typing in a sequence, and the lance was launched at last.

It was now a matter of time as they watched anxiously at the Lance's progression up and the angel's gulping down.  
"Can we do it in time?" said Misato to herself - like talking to oneself was a normal behavior.  
She looked helplessly at the screen.  
"00:06:05"

Suddenly, Gendou lunged from his seat onto Maya, screaming.  
"**No!** You will not take my sum away from me!"  
"Son or Sum?"  
"**SUM!**"  
He was referring to that 25,360 yen (and to-be 76,080 yen if he could help it).  
As Maya started screaming helplessly as Gendou harassed her; all of a sudden, a roof-tile opened up directly above Gendou. From that square of light, a figure jumped in and wrestled Gendou to the ground.  
It was Toji!

A white box popped up, violently, next to Unit-01, and opened up to reveal the Lance of Longinus.  
Shinji knew what he had to do.  
"00:01:84"  
The song was about to end.  
It was literally now or never.  
So, now.

Shinji ran up at full speed, screaming horrifically, and launched the Lance of Longinus through the air. It streaked through, silently.  
It flew up to the angel.

"00:00:02"


	6. Post Epilogue

**Post-epilogue**

The night chirped with many cicadas. It was warm, like all summer nights. Dark was the night. The wind as active as the dark. The grass was thick, and the fire burnt softly. It licked at the ball of marshmallow, suspended on a stick. It was Shinji who was holding the stick. Next to him, on one side was Kensuke, and the other was Rei. Opposite the fire was Toji.

Kensuke turned around to get another marshmallow from behind him, and poked it on the stick.  
"I'm glad you guys have come with me," he said, serenely. "Nobody usually camps out here, much. Pretty quiet, here, alone. You know - Just you and the cicadas. Once they've gone quiet, you're by yourself."  
"Yeah," said Toji, exhaling, "this place ain't so bad. I guess I should come out more often."  
Toji laid back on the grass with his hands behind his head, looking up at the black sky, glittering with stars.

Misato walked up behind Kensuke and poked him in the butt with a stick.  
"Argh! Hey, watch it!"  
"Sorry," she said, drunkedly. "I guess they're so marshmallowy..." She tried to poked at the sack, again, and finally got a ball of marshmallow. Satisfied with this, she walked away.

Shinji watched as she went up to her caravan, and attempted to stick the marshmallow into her microwave. He rolled his eyes and decided to look back to his marshmallow.

In the background, the four children could hear Ritsuko and Misato arguing about the best way to cook marshmallow.  
"What do you mean _an oven_?" said Misato, flamboyantly (drunkedly).  
"You know, as well as I do, microwaves don't cook marshmallow properly. You can't even shut the door with that stick poking out."  
"Watch me... They don't both begin with 'M' for no reason..."  
"..."  
"... Damn. Okay, the microwave must be stuffed. Big deal... Damn. Give me a handyman, someone!"  
"Misato, you've had one too many Yebisu for one night. Maybe you should just sleep it out."  
"And miss the karaoke? No way!" Misato sighed a grunt. "Okay, Ritusko, you've won, this time, but when I get sobered up, I'll outwit you like a Monkey to a jar of pickles... Pass me the oven, Rits.  
"There we go. Like I told you, my oven is far more superior to you and your simple microwave, Misato. I made it myself. It's totally environmentally friendly, as well."  
"It seems to be taking a long time to preheat, Rits."  
"Just give it a few. For some reason, solar-ovens seem to take a while. I never seem to have worked out why... I mean, all those testings in the dark laboratories on the solar-powered ovens, and it never worked, expect for that one day when I stepped out onto the open world for once, and the solar-oven just went _Zing!_ Now that I think about it, I think it's got to do with the presence of the sun... No, wait a second... Shit.  
"Uh... Pass me the beer, again, Misato..."

While this was happening, Maya, Makoto and Shigeru was sitting at another campfire and were starting to practice for the karaoke. Shigeru played the guitar (naturally), and Makoto played the bagpipe. Maya sung. Once they began the first bar, everyone started throwing tomatoes at them; so they stopped.

Fuyutsuki helped Gendou along as he walked - limped, rather - around in an arm cast, a leg cast, a neck brace, bandages around his head and a black eye patch on his left eye. He hopped along on one leg, only, and didn't have a spare arm to carry any crutch.  
After several more painful minutes on this slow progress, Gendou finally got to were he needed to be, and he looked up. And no, it wasn't at the AFTPOS.  
"So, we have a deal, Gendou?"  
"Yes. I'll let you come out, here, once a week and let you eat your life-time's supply of marshmallow, and you'll continue to donate blood."  
"Very good. Sounds reasonable?"  
"Quite."  
"And the Lance will not come within 500 meters radius of me?"  
"Promise."  
"Then it is done."  
At that, Lilith grabbed a handful of marshmallow and slowly cooked it over a furnace.  
"And my hand?" Interrupted Gendou.  
"Oh, yes."  
Lilith held out her hand over Gendou, and Gendou's lost hand fell out like a gold nugget out of the palm of No Face.

_Only people who watched Spirited Away would get this. Sorry._

  
Fuyutsuki caught it and put it away.  
"Alright, professor. Let's go." And Gendou hopped away to NERV's surgery ward. 

All the while, Penpen waddled around near a projector on a table. A disc fell off the table and landed next to Penpen. Penpen wondered what it was.  
It read "Karaoke Mix DVD Mk. II".  
Penpen decided to keep it, and put it away in a pouch in his belly (that no one knew about). Penpen pulled out another disc from within - unmarked - and threw it on to the table as a replacement.

_Pulling stuff out of the belly pouch comes from Doraemon. Those who haven't watched it probably won't get it._

  
_I'm sure no one could tell the difference. I was getting sick of watching it, anyway. It's got some entertainment value but... Comedies aren't what they used to be..._  
He waddled off to a hot spring nearby, and intended to play the karaoke dvd later at home, and attempt to sing. 

As Shinji continued to cook his marshmallow at the camp, he noticed Asuka running around topless, with an explanative can of beer in her hand. Obviously, the psychiatric department still hasn't been able to cure her of her alcoholic addiction. Then again, they've been pretty busy, recently.  
In fact, all three guys leaned back to look at Asuka being chased about, angrily, by Ritsuko... who was also running around topless. From listening to their shouts to each other, they could work out that that can of beer was the last one. All the while, a Misato was chasing them both around... topless.  
Why they were topless in the first place, they were yet to find out...

The three stooges would have anticipated Ryouji Kaji to be chasing them as well, until...  
Rei's eyes looked from her marshmallow, left and right, to see what they were doing. She felt the responsibility to do something about it.  
"Boys..." she called, remindingly.  
The three all turned back to their marshmallows, mumbling incoherently some excuses and so forth.

At last, after several more minutes of whatever the NERV party were doing in the fields, Kaji stepped onto stage and announced the beginning of the Karaoke.  
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the fifth NERV Karaoke party!"  
There were cheers.  
"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are glad to see so many enthusiastic men and women, out here, on this night, and I can assure you, this will be one hell of a night!"  
More cheers.  
"And, may I also add, let us all give a round of applause to welcome our special guest of tonight's Karaoke: Megumi Hayashibara."  
Megumi, the retired, 48 year old J-Pop artist, walked onto stage, slowly, and said "Hello." She was hit by the deafening roar of the crowd, like Elton John back from the dead, and immediately died from a heart attack.  
"Well, that's about all she has to say, I guess," said Ryouji, enthusiastically. "Having heard our First Child, Rei, become more talkative, don't you think there's this uncanny similarity in their voices, ladies and gentlemen?"  
There were shouts of agreement.  
"And wouldn't we like to have our First Child come up to be our First guest to sing...!"  
Rei was hit by the deafening roar of the crowd, like Elvis Presley back from the dead.

"But first!" Kaji said, in a more serious tone of voice. "Ladies and gentlemen... I must ask every single one of you one very important question!"  
The crowd murmured amongst themselves about how anything could be more important than karaoke. Kaji, all of a sudden, became very gripping and harsh in tone.  
In fact, he started shouting, "I know you're in there, somewhere! Oh, yes! Someone in this very... field... is a CULPRIT!"  
Everyone gasped and looked around each other.  
"I know you're in there! Step out, now!"  
The crowd became increasingly worried until Kaji broke out in the most definitive of questions. (Which was weird, since questions don't usually define anything.)  
"... **WHO BURNT GENDOU'S MANGAS?**"  
Everyone stopped talking and stared at him, speechless (stupified) for a moment. Kaji looked at crowd expectantly for a good second.

Everyone began throwing tomatoes at Kaji.

Misato stole the microphone off Kaji and shouted, "**LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!**"  
The crowd resumed their roaring, like Michael Jackson back from the dead, and threw more tomatoes at Misato.  
Rei stole the microphone off Misato and continued the karaoke.  
"Alright, here we go. Hit it, Asuka!"  
"Gimme that!" Shouted Misato, covered in red, like she was rising from the dead. The two began wrestling for the mic.  
Asuka jammed the DVD in anyway, and the picture was projected in amazing 3D onto the giant screen behind them. The volume was turned up, and the blank screen fired up.

Misato and Rei heard... sweeping noises.  
"A **wha-?**"  
The whole crowd gasped and the two turned around to see... **TOJI!**  
"**OH, MY GOD!**"  
It was that evil thing, again! Everyone became a panic and screamed in horror. The 3D had outdone itself. Dolby Digital® enhanced those slaps. It repeated over and over again alternating from slow-mo to real time. There was no escape, again! Asuka actually, literally _did_ jam the DVD player!  
No one knew where to run. They ran into caravans, they ran out of caravans. But they couldn't turn it off.

And as for the people in the city who looked out into the mountains and got the rare chance to see that large, small, glowing thing being abused... Let's just say, the city of Tokyo-3 did not sleep, that night.

That night, in all that panic, no one heard the cicadas' chirp.  
No one heard the crackling flames, charring the marshmallows.  
And surely enough, they wouldn't have heard the polyphonic ring of Maya Ibuki's cell phone ringing...

**End.**

* * *

As the credits roll, the music plays "Moonlight Sonata".

I hope that you have enjoyed this fic.

Now that it is offically the end, I must now shock you further by revealing that I have one last chapter to add. As you'd understand, this is a long fic; and like all fics (ok, not all - say... movies), things had to be cut out.  
In other words, I just want to put in one or two very small scenes that were cut from the original version. There's an authors' notes section, as well.

So, send along a review, even if it's just to tell me you read it. I really want to know if you read it! A sequel, believe it or not, may also potentially come, or maybe a prequel, or maybe something even more bizzare. I actually have many ideas already:  
One regarding the polyphonic ring and beings from the _n_th dimension, one regarding what happened and was utterly forgotten just a few months prior to these events, one completely disregarding the existance of this fic (a soap-opera/novel-ish thing), one regarding the debate between Shinji and Gendou about Revenge as a dish, and one that is not on my list.  
What do you think?

But anyway, having rambled on for all this time, I thank you, the reader, for taking the time to read this fic. I hope you've enjoyed it. I am in awe that you'd read all the way to this last paragraph. And I hope to entertain you again. (At least most of you.)


	7. Omake

Sorry for the delay, but I was... busy.  
Well, this section isn't actually very much, really. The Omake section contains deleted scenes, though there are only two major scenes that were taken out, to be truthful, which was why, at the last minute, I've decided to include a nice little something.  
What is it?  
Well, to cut a long story short, it's basically a short snippet of a weird thing we thought up, inspired from this fic during the writing process. Basically, a great parody of Iron Chef. It doesn't matter if you've never heard of it before, just read it! (Warning, my Japanese may be absolutely incorrect.) If you happen to like it, we can complete it and post it as a new fic.  
The second part of the Authors' Notes has some trivial information you may find extremely useless but wouldn't have gone without.  
So, anyway, I'll let you on with it, now.

* * *

**Omake**

Deleted Scenes - 1

_Shinji has finally finished explaining how he escaped near certain death from the hydrogen tanks exploding..._

"So, do you understand?" Asked Shinji to everyone after that ten minute enlightenment.  
Everyone in the Command Center nodded dumbly at Shinji, slowly, then shook their heads, slowly. Shinji scratched his head, "Hmmm..."

Misato ran up to Shinji, crying, and sort of tackled him with a hug to the ground (known as a flying tackle hug). Everyone at NERV thought this was a sweet moment and cried, "Awww..."  
Having jumped over the railing to plummet down a rather high height, Fuyutsuki popped out, behind Misato with a wide grin and said, "So, anyone want to hear _my_ survival story?"  
"NO!" shouted everyone.  
Fuyutsuki looked at he floor with a frown. "Oh..." he whined.

As Shinji got out of Misato's arms and up on his feet, he was tackled back down by someone else calling him "BAKA!" and was kicked into a corner (known as a flying angry kick).  
It was Asuka, and she was bashing the hell out of him, screaming random German curses and phrases, and giving him an all-round painful time. Shinji tried to feebly protect his endangered parts as Asuka loudly screeched into the Dolby Digital® air and with the strength of a rhino stamping out a flame.  
Oh yes, Asuka managed a stab at Shinji's groin, and he contributed a high-pitched scream along with Asuka's that went on for quite a while.  
Asuka had pride, and falling into a brief depression didn't do it any good, having thought Shinji was dead. Now, of course, perhaps she would have wished he still was.  
This is her attempting to regain the pride she lost. The noise of foot stomping on groin went on like a dummyplug. There seemed like no end to the pain for Shinji. No one in NERV bothered to do anything about it, being entranced by this weird, enhanced sound of stomping and squishing. Shinji's family-jewels were... not in a nice state.

All of a sudden, Asuka stopped her stomping, and her screaming. There was silence, aside from Shinji's wailing that still carried on.  
"Look!" Cried Maya. "She's swallowed her own tongue!"  
"Crikey!" Makoto added. "Now have a go at that!"  
"What?"  
"Just have a look at her powerful legs! Now under the anesthetics of her own tongue, she's demonstrating them for us to see, in the air!"  
Asuka fell on her back and withered like an ant on surface-spray, holding her throat. Her legs kicked at the air.  
Everyone reacted in awe. "Oooo...!"  
The guys standing on the other side where they had a good view of Asuka's behind were a little too speechless to also say "Oooo...!", as appropriate as it would be.  
"Mate, you can imagine the pain her prey would have to endure. Even now, I have to be careful! Alright, but I'm coming for a closer look and a little prod..."  
Misato interrupted, "Where on Earth did that come from?"  
"Eh, mate?" Makoto went on.  
"That was completely random, coming from you. This isn't some weird-assed fanfic written by a crazy adolescent girl, you know."  
"Not even for Steve Irwin?"  
"Shut up."  
"Sorry, Major... I don't know what came over me..."

* * *

Deleted Scenes - 2

_Misato captures Toji to be the Unit-01 pilot..._

"Take him away, boys!" said Ritsuko like she'd said it a million times.  
"Hey, that my line!" Shouted Misato at Ritsuko. She composed herself and looked towards the men. "Bake him away, toys!"

The men looked at each other for a second, shrugged and threw Toji into a giant oven. They went as far as dressing themselves in gorilla suits and were about to grab the cymbals before Misato dragged them away by their ears, embarrassingly.

* * *

Deleted Scenes - 3

_A small fight sequence with the Marshmallow Man of Canaan..._

The angel used both its fat hands and brought Kensuke's kick down. Kensuke pulled out his shield from behind as he was still in the air, and brought it down on the angel's head with a bang!  
The angel did not have time to react to Shinji's baseball bat to the head, that came immediately after. This, in turn, did not give the angel enough time to react to the EAT-Shield that came back down on its head again.

A second later, the angel decided to retreat a few hundred meters back. It backflipped through.  
As it landed down, Shinji decided it wouldn't get away so easily, and had a go at it right after landing. But no, the angel followed through with a second backflip.  
It was like trying to whack a flying piñata.  
But Shinji tried again, this time, hitting _downwards_, not _side ways_. And he got it.

Now on the ground, the angel evidently came to great fury. With its great, heavy arm, the angel swung it at Unit-01's head...

* * *

**Bakelite Chef Special - Revenge**

_Introduction to Bakelite Chef..._

The vast expanse of Kitchen Stadium was a sight to be seen. At the back, raised up for all to see was the strip of platform where the host would stand. In front was a clothed table. Behind was something else, looming even taller than the platform, but sheathed in darkness, such that none could see what was there.  
Coming from the forefront of the platform are steps. Many steps leading down. Down to the main arena of Kitchen Stadium. A circle of metallic kitchen benches, devided down the middle for those to enter and cook within, and also devided to separate the two battling chefs. In the center is a circle of many tools and machines. Refrigerators, blenders, ovens, cupboards and so much more that few could tell what else there was. Outside of this arena was the 'outside' place which was too dimly lit to see into. But, within this stadium, there was definitely all the ingredients any chef could ask for.

Echoing over a speaker system, Shigeru started this week's episode from the commentator's box near the left side.  
"Yes, another week of Bakelite Chef; but this time, a special episode with our challenger being the famous Shinji Ikari, himself; here to take on one of the Bakelite Chefs. A special episode not just because of the challenger but because of the theme ingredient, we are told.  
"Up here in the commentator's box, with me, is our special guest for tonight - Second Lieutenant, Maya Ibuki."  
"Hello, there," Maya said, bowing politely from where she was sitting, to Kaji's right.  
"And I hear you're not much of a cook, are you?"  
"Oh, absolutely not," Maya said. "I don't usually spend any time near a kitchen since I'm stuck with all the computers all the time."  
"Well, that's understandable," Shigeru said with a smile. "And also, with us tonight, again is Professor Kouzou Fuyutsuki."  
Fuyutsuki bowed lightly. "Always a pleasure."  
There was an applause for the introduction from the three. "And now," Shigeru went on whilst the applause was still in play, "let us welcome our host, Chairman Kaji." The three joined with the clapping as a charismatic host in extravagant clothing stepped onto stage, behind the table, and stole the spotlight.

His voice was clear and rich. Energetic and engaging. Kaji began his own monologue in his native Japanese.  
"Arutoki, doitsu ni watashi wa hoyahoya de denkiteki na otoko no ko wo uketamawarimashita. (Kodomo wa nippon no shichou ni pokkiri hairimashita.)" ("I was once told by a friend back in Germany about this legendary new child, just arrived into the Japanese branch.")  
"Giryou wa mettani minakutemo, konbenshonaru na kateiryouri yori chinmikakou no chiji ni arimashita." ("His skills in not only conventional home cooking but also specializing in an incredible array of many other rare and special ingredients, and dishes, yet seen very rarely by many at all.")  
"Soshite, nihon de watashi no kinchaku wa kodomo wo atte kara, shinko na no wo midasukoto me wo miharimashita." ("So, when I finally did arrive in Japan to meet this boy, I was amazed to find out it was true for myself.")  
Somewhere in the dark of 'outside', Shinji stood there, listen to this about himself. Today, the air about him was completely different. Today, after having been chosen to be the challenger of this show at the last minute (due to scheduling difficulties with Keel Lorenz), Shinji found this opportunity to do something he's always wanted to do. Today, he's going to face someone he's always wanted to face. Today was it.  
He was holding his head up high, awaiting to be summoned.  
"Sorekara, watashi wa... 'Kono otoko no ko wa moshikasuruto tatakaukoto ga dekimasu' to omoimashita... _Soredewa_, minasan, iremashou! Naarufu no Saado Chidoren, Ikari Shinji!" ("And it was then that I thought... 'This boy was, perhaps, good enough to fight one of my Bakelite Chefs...' _And so_, everyone, let us have him in! Welcome the Third Child of NERV, Shinji Ikari!")

There was a burst of applause as the curtain was raised to reveal the Shinji Ikari in full battle uniform (his normal white shirt and pants but with an apron) striding into the cooking arena.  
"Tall and proud, Shinji Ikari makes his way up Kitchen Stadium," Makoto commented, "he looks already pumped up."  
Kaji was already down near the front to greet him.  
"Watashi no chouriba ni youkoso," Kaji said, bowing and shaking Shinji's hand once. ("Welcome to my kitchen.")  
"Thank you," Shinji said. He was a bit slightly tense now that he's here. Nonetheless, his face was hard and stern.  
"Kinou no ban no akeudon wo mankitsu shimashita," Kaji said, professionally. "Demo no yori katsuragi san wo shimashita." ("I rather enjoyed your noodles, last night... Though not as much as Ms. Katsuragi.")  
"_Shut up, Kaji_!" A voice shouted from backstage.  
"Er..." Shinji said, "thanks. I'll do my best."  
"Sou..." Kaji said, as a prelude to his next and most anticipated line... ("Of course...")  
Shinji was already look up towards the darkness beyond the stage.  
"_Yomigaru Bakelite Chef_!" Kaji dramatically said, shooting his hand towards the darkness. ("I summon the Bakelite Chefs!")

Suddenly, the entire stadium turned dark, and the darkness, before, lit up to reveal the pictures of three persons under three arches on the wall, like some shrine for these gods. Dramatic choral music played.  
"Making their dramatic ascent into the ethereal Kitchen Stadium, these are your Bakelite Chefs!" Shigeru voiced over.  
Indeed, from beneath the floor three people, like statues, rose up through the fake smog and revealed themselves, posed, with more stage-lights.  
"Bakelite Chef Junk Food - Asuka Langley Soryu." Asuka held a kitchen knife.  
"Bakelite Chef Home Cooking - Misato Katsuragi." Misato held a beer can.  
"And Bakelite Chef Corporate Cafeteria - Gendou Ikari." Gendou held a large teddy bear - Popo.  
It was then that Gendou realized the props department gave him the wrong thing. "Damn you guys! Give me my 'We Love Gendou!' sign!"

"Watashi wa bibi na chokkan ga aru kedo kakushikibarimashou," Kaji added before his other most anticipated lines. "_Dare to erabu!_" ("Though I have a small hunch about who you will choose, let us follow through with the formalities... _Who will it be!_")

Shinji knew who it'd be.  
He pointed to the man in the middle. "_Fathe_- I mean, _Gendou Ikari_!"

"It's Gendou Ikari who gets it!" Exploded Shigeru. (A montage about Gendou plays as Shigeru keeps talking.) "Gendou Ikari, colder than ice and man of steel - although he's had emotional disturbances not long ago - he retains his death glare especially for tonight's challenger! Famous for his cold dishes and infamous for his improvizations. Ikari is one man to fear when he gets worked up. Running the entire Japanese branch of NERV, Gendou has won several awards for Best Food Served between the NERV and SEELE organizations. Although it may also be because Shinji Ikari was charged with being head of the Food's Department, Ikari retains credibility for his wondrous decisive thinking. What he says goes, and what goes often turns out to be awe-inspiringly good results. But will it be good for him in today's battle?"

Chairman Kaji, now back up behind the table, gave his final words before the beginning is marked of the great battle of today's special.  
"A, myou. Misatosan to omoimashita," Kaji said, without blinking. ("Oh, weird. I thought he was going to pick Misato.")  
"_Shut the hell up, Kaji_!" A voice shouted from backstage.  
"Saa. Kono futari wo mite kara, watashi wa tema no niai wo kidzukimashita. Soredewa, dorubi dijitoru (tourokushouhyou) de kaiwa wo nusumigiki suru koto wo mitememasu; demo, sore wa watashi wo kangeki shimashita," Kaji said, stirringly. "Sono tema wa koko de itsumo tabegoro desu. Itsumo watashitachi made imasu... Soshite, _kyou no tema wa kore desu_!" ("Anyway. Now that I see these two ready, I have noticed how appropriate the theme ingredient of this week's is. So, I admit I've been eavesdropping over the conversations with Dolby Digital®, but it was that very conversation that inspired me to choose this as the ingredient. It's always in season around here. Always there for us to have it until we finally do get... And so, _we shall unveil today's theme_!")

With one swift motion, with that last and most anticipated line, Kaji pulled the cloth from the table for the theme ingredient to rise up, from within, ominously like God would come down on Judgment Day.  
The music was just as apocalyptic.  
With the theme ingredient now revealed, everyone gasped in awe and fear.

"Kyou no tema wa FUKUSHUU!" ("Today's theme is REVENGE!")

Reflecting back within Kaji's tranquil memories, Kaji recalled the following:  
_Revenge...  
If my memory serves me correctly, there was once a young man I eavesdropped over who said... "Revenge is actually very bitter, but works well with soy sauce." This means that the only true way to counter the unbearable bitter found in the skin is to do it with plenty of salt.  
And what better way than with soy sauce? For not only does the salt balance out with revenge, the actual soy within also penetrates and enriches the satisfaction in revenge near the center... to give that little part of revenge, that's worthwhile, a more evident impact.  
And so, remember, my friends... "Revenge is actually very bitter, but works well with soy sauce."_

Back into the reality of Kitchen Stadium, Shigeru launches into the last bit before the beginning begins. "So, finally having revealed the special ingredient of today's, the match between Shinji Ikari and his father, Gendou Ikari, is intensified with one of the most challenging yet sought-after ingredients in the cooking realm - Revenge. What is going to result of this? Let's _get it on_!"

Kaji raised his hands and said the last line before the gong is struck to begin.  
"**Allez Cuisine**!"

* * *

**Authors' Notes**

It started with a small line. Nothing much at all. One single word.

"Nooooooooo...!"

That was it.  
Weirdly enough, it spawned an idea, a long list of notes, a whole year's worth of hard work & effort between two people and a sore wrist, which - if it must - can summed up altogether as... this. _How_, however, shall not be revealed and will be simply left up for public speculation.  
It was fun, it was engaging, it was worthwhile. It was our first published fic. Thanks for taking an interest. We hope you liked it.

Extremely Useless Trivia That You'd Think You Wouldn't Have Gone Without

_Prologue_

It would have been thought extremely odd to have a blizzard in the middle of summer, which is exactly the season Japan has been in for the past 15 years or so.  
Flashing blue/red/green lights do add up to "white light".  
Maya, Shigeru and Makoto have been living together in an apartment for almost a year. It was originally Shigeru's idea.  
The Nestlé yogurt that Gendou was meditating to is important (and may be more apparently so in a sequel, should one come). The pedestrian Misato hit was actually Shinji's teacher's nephew.  
The rabbit Misato hit was illegallysmuggled into Japan on the day, but escaped after its airplane crashed within the vicinity of Tokyo-3.  
The sleigh that Gendou rode in belonged to Fuyutsuki, who recently retired from being a surrogate Santa at the local shopping center.  
The upgrading of MAGI took 17 hours in total.

_Week One_

The wind-up scroll that Gendou had was invented by -yes, you guessed it - Ritsuko, several weeks ago.  
The Konami code to toggle Rei's underwear colors are _Left Right Left Right Left Right Left Right Up Down Up Down_ whilst holding the B button and a set of keys from the janitor. The colors that are available is White, Red, Green, Blue, Pink, Purple, sequenced Gold and translucent.  
_The Broth_ tasted like chicken, which was acid-dipped, brushed with a cheap form of toothpaste, peppered, chocolate-coated, blow-torched and buried in soft peat for three months before being sterilized. The texture is that of PVA glue.  
Kouzou had the floor waxed up just two days before Shinji was required to slide across it.  
The water that poured was at 7 degrees centigrade.  
Asuka's breasts were at 39.4 degrees centigrade.

_Week Two_

The "really good dream" that Shinji had with Rei involved a beach, a massage bed, a pair of very neat bikinis, blue trees and King Kong.  
The dress that Ritsuko had to wear was, in fact, not worn by Yui but was a replica that was up on display in memory of Yui and trashed the next day by Ritsuko's mother.  
Rei I also had her dress on display, but only at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet marked "Top Secret".  
'Poor Man's Rama' is a real brand of ramen. The authors do not endorse it, however.  
The petrol that Misato carried was rather expensive and off the black-market, as most of the world's oil-supplies were already depleted.  
Rei has an obsession for guns, and hence always carries one strapped to her upper-outer left thigh. The one on her right is a flare gun. She also owns four more at her apartment, but the other twelve would be considered rifles.  
Gendou immediately ordered the funding for the time-machine project to be redirected to the research on hair-growth after having his hair burnt off.  
Maya, as we all would know, dates older women and younger men. This, so far, creates a total of two bi people in NERV.

_Week Three_

The 'We Love Gendou!' shirts and hats are available on sale at your nearest Gendou fanclub outlet, which would inexorably be at the basement of Fuyutsuki's apartment (which Fuyutsuki rents at a cheap ¥50 a week).  
Popo, the teddy bear's name, derives from Bobo, the name of Mr. Burns' teddy bear from The Simpsons.  
If no one had noticed, each week, something lands on Maya's head. (I.e. The bowl, Fuyutsuki, the coffee mug.)  
All great leaders have a bucket of water to put their feet into when it's hot; I weird tradition that arose after Second Impact, in Japan, when summer became permanent.  
Rei screamed when she saw Misato walk in with the full-on heavy artillery and about to throw grenades, partly out of realization of impending doom, partly of surprise, but mostly because they were her's.  
Konami games and XBox became increasingly rare after the revival of retro game consoles. Weirdly enough, everyone still acknowledges that Konami and Xbox are technically more advance, and are well respected.  
Shirou Sagisu composed Misato's Theme.  
The Giant Marshmallow Man of Cannan was inspired by Ghost Busters' Stay Puft Marshmallow man.

_Epilogue_

Yui liked chocolate. Unit-01 did, too.  
"Extruding-end track", "geoport" and many other words had to be invented by the author for reasons of practicality and spiffiness.  
Kaji's role model was not just Sherlock Holmes, but Detective Conan.  
Gendou had to artificially extend his limbs to fit the Darth Vader costume.  
Iron Chef is still popular. (Hence, the _Allez Cuisine!_)  
Despite the number of awards that NERV had on display, SEELE had more by a fraction.  
Gendou was not really Kaworu's father.  
There are phones in heaven.  
1024 dpi on MAGI's holographic projectors aren't actually very impressive.  
The word 'AFTPOS' is a spin-off of 'EFTPOS'.  
_Toukyou Tokkyo Kyoka Kyoku_ was originally a tongue twister, and later made the name of the new Tokyo Patents Licensing Office just to annoy people.  
Onions DO NOT have the power to regenerate themselves, for the most part.  
Ritsuko's line, "Twenty three revisions, and we overlooked clothing AGAIN!", was in reference to one of NERV's first inventions (unnamed), which took care of the cloning production of Rei. They still hadn't bothered to configure the machine to export Reis with clothing.  
The P2 Prototype's watch-like casing was inspired by Disney's My Favorite Martian's _Suit_.  
Ode to Joy was really playing over the Dolby Digital ® speakers.  
The big, fat fight-scene between Shinji and the angel was intentional and was meant to send-up epic fight-sequences in, say, The Matrix sequels. Choreography, for the most part, was by Nathan Rawlins.  
The Blue-line High school is fictional and the name was inspired by the train - Blue-line. The Green Soaring High school, which it originally was, in Izu, wasin reference to the book, Ringu, by Koji Suzuki. "Soaring" was a theater group, and "Izu" was the place where a deadly video tape was found.

_Post-Epilogue_

The Doraemon pouch that Penpen had was a feature Misato whimsically added back in the days when she was working in an experiment with Penpen, drunk.  
Fuyutsuki was the guy who set up the tomato stall, nearby.  
Also, because of the Revival of Retro-stuff Movement, polyphonic ringtones were rare.


End file.
